Opportunity Details: Urgent

Partner for Surgery (PfS), in collaboration with the private Guatemalan foundation Fundación Chusita Llerandi de Herrera, has built a new surgical center, Centro de Salud Bárbara (CSB), in the western highlands of Guatemala to serve the area's impoverished, rural population in need of surgical care.  This unique facility is now available to partner with and host independent surgical mission teams interested in serving the people of this region.

The CSB surgical center is located an hour northwest of Guatemala City, Guatemala and is dedicated exclusively to making health care available to rural, indigenous Guatemalans from the remotest areas of the country, where surgical care is otherwise completely inaccessible.  This population is most in need of general, pediatric, and plastic surgeons, as well as gynecologists.

The surgical center is constructed, equipped and maintained to ensure patient safety and comfort, as well as maximum team efficiency. The operating suite has two fully equipped rooms, including anesthesia machines, laparoscopic towers and autoclaves. The premises are contained on one floor with easy access between patient admissions, pre-op, operating rooms, PACU and the recovery ward.  PACU contains 4 beds and the recovery ward contains 12 beds.  Additional on-premise lodging is available for patients and their family members at Albergue San Gabriel. This allows patients sufficient time to completely recover before traveling home to their rural communities.
 
The CSB also provides medical education for Guatemalan medical students.  Fourth year medical students from Francisco Marroquín Medical School in Guatemala City spend four months at CSB performing their rural service requirement. This collaboration provides 24 hour patient care and offers an excellent teaching opportunity for visiting surgical teams. It is also critical to achieving our ultimate goal of reducing dependence on visiting surgical teams
and creating a system of surgical care that is run by Guatemalans for Guatemalans.
 
PfS provides a full spectrum of support  for visiting surgical teams, and can assist in arranging all in-country logistics, including transportation, accommodations, meals, local support staff, Spanish and Mayan language translators, and procurement of local supplies.  The surgical teams are responsible for recruiting all necessary surgical personnel, and procuring and shipping needed surgical supplies to the CSB surgical center.  PfS pre-screens potential surgical patients and escorts them to and from their rural communities, providing continuity of care throughout the process.  PfS community volunteers are also available to assist patients if difficulties occur during post-operative recovery.

• Partner for Surgery
• Guatemala