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Resettlement
The initial population we served from 1995-2001 were resettled and internally displaced refugee communities in the Peten and the Alta Verapaz regions. Community clinics provided treatments in situ which reduced medical and transportation costs for patients. They are now integrated into the rural areas where their communities are located. These communities' medical clinics provide treatments, including acupuncture and midwifery services. Our work in training acupuncturists then entered a second phase after 2001.
Previously scattered Ke'kchi communities began training by GUAMAP since 2002 GUAMAP is moving away from basic training while GUAMAP Guatemalan acupuncturists began to teach basic courses in 2007, as GUAMAP solidifies a higher level of training in level III, and offers specialty courses. As part of our presence in the community clinics, we are also looking at promoting the use of local plant medicines, and re-supplying acupuncture needles of various sizes.
Between 1994 and 2002, GUAMAP worked in cooperation with an NGO, ADEPAC based in Guatemala City, with a field office in the Peten. By 2003, GUAMAP worked in cooperation with ASESCA's Peten office. GUAMAP provides acupuncture training using Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for health promoters who were earlier trained in health education as health promoters. Health promoters then use what they learn to treat men, women and children in their home communities. Since 1995, GUAMAP has trained some 125 health promoters in the northern region, reaching over 20 different communities.
Curative & Community Based Health Care
GUAMAP trainers and GUAMAP trained health promoters have recorded 10k treatments and developed a method of data collection to record outcomes. Requests for training come from individual community members Some communities have already been trained in working with emergency situations employing acupuncture though a GUAMAP trainers and staff have produced two manuals, both in Spanish: one in basic acupuncture and one in emergency medicine.
GUAMAP established training protocols in 1999 for the basic (level I) and intermediate (level II) students, and in 2007 / 2008 in level III. GUAMAP provides, through donations, disposable needles in its training and re-supply functions. A Guatemalan acupuncturist trained was trained as a trainer by GUAMAP and began training other health promoters in level I in 2007.
Assembly of Peten Acupuncturists
An Assembly of 15 Peten Acupuncturists was formed in 2006 and expanded to 25 in 2007.
At that time a fee was established for charging rural patient at a minimal level. The assembly passed fifteen protocols for the regulated practice of acupuncture in Peten in 2006,informing communities and the Ministry of Health regional office in Peten. In 2007 and 2008, a few new protocols were passed regarding requirements for monitoring and needle distribution.
Cooperation between the Ministry of Health led to their distribution of bio-boxes to acupuncturists and a verbal response in 2007 to a long standing request of GUAMAP and ASECSA's for sanitary disposal of medical waste.
Petition for Credentials
In November 2008, a meeting with Dr. Obanda at the Poptùn Area Regional Health Office in which two representatives of the Peten Acupuncture Committee for the Assembly, the Director of ASECSA-Peten Office, Two GUAMAP Coordinating Committee Members and the Director of the Poptun Health Promotion Program of the Catholic Vicariate of Peten presented a petition for cooperation with the Secretaria de Salud in issuing and maintaining standards for certification of Peten acupuncturists. There was not immediate positive response.
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