Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq (Guatemala)

Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq aims to eliminate barriers to health and wellbeing for all Guatemalans. Led by indigenous healthcare workers, they unite medicine, culture, and language to provide high-quality care in rural Guatemala. While more than half of the Guatemalan population speaks a Mayan language, most healthcare services are delivered in Spanish. Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq provides care in the communities where their patients live and in the languages they speak.

The Eurofins Foundation has been supporting the project “Detecting and Preventing Cervical Cancer in Rural Guatemala” since 2021/22.

To prevent illness and deaths from cervical cancer, Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq is combining the latest in screening technology with culturally-sensitive care and navigation. The Cervical Cancer Project provides women in rural Guatemala with the information and resources they need to detect and address early signs of disease. This programme serves more than 2,000 primarily Mayan women in six regions in Guatemala.

While cervical cancer can be prevented and successfully treated with early detection, it remains the leading fatal cancer among women in Guatemala. More than 80% of cervical cancer deaths in the world occur in lower- and middle-income countries like Guatemala, where women face an array of barriers to accessing effective screening and follow-up care, including cost, transportation, language, and discrimination.

To eliminate these barriers, indigenous community health workers travel to patients’ homes and villages to provide screening and follow-up services in patients’ Mayan languages. When advanced treatment is required, the NGO’s navigators accompany patients to help them bridge language and cultural gaps in the public health system. Their new microbiology laboratory supports human papillomavirus (HPV) screening and other diagnostics. The Cervical Cancer Project thus brings lifesaving, high quality, state-of-the-art prevention and care to thousands of women in remote areas.

Eurofins has helped support:

Materials to collect and process Pap smear samples
Training for nurses transitioning from Pap to HPV screening
A chemical biologist in charge of preparing their new DNA lab for HPV testing.

For the period October 2022 - August 2023, Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu’ Kawoq offered health screenings to 5,000 women and administered Pap tests for cervical cancer for 2,102 women. Of the tests administered, 88% showed evidence of abnormal conditions, including infection and inflammation, and 3.7% indicated the presence of precancerous or cancerous cells.

These results underscore the critical importance of moving forward with this work to save lives and prevent needless suffering.

In 2023/2024, the Eurofins Foundation renews its support to this programme.

This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

Country or Region