wfn.org | Cuban Physician Helps

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3290 notes).

Note 3289 by UMNS on Nov. 14, 1996 at 16:00 Eastern (3342 characters).

SEARCH:Guatemala, Cuba, Methodist, tuberculosis, traditional,
medicine
Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Linda Bloom                      575(10-31-32-71B){3289}
          New York (212) 870-3803                    Nov. 14, 1996

EDITORS NOTE: This article is the third of a three-part series on
church support of traditional medicine.

Cuban physician helps
Guatemalans improve health

                        A UMNS News Feature
                         by Paul Jeffrey*

     CHICHICASTENANGO, Guatemala (UMNS) -- Ana Margarita Mayor's
father, a Methodist pastor, always wanted his daughter to be a
medical missionary.
     Now he's taking care of his three grandchildren for a month
while Mayor and her husband help improve the health of indigenous
people living in the western highlands of Guatemala.
     Mayor, a physician at an HIV/AIDS center in Santa Clara,
Cuba, was a participant at a Nov. 4-9 conference on community-
based health care here sponsored by the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries and the Latin American Council of Evangelical
Methodist Churches (CIEMAL).
     After the event concluded, she stayed on with her husband
Daniel to help local Methodists combat tuberculosis, a rampant
health problem in the indigenous communities of this war-torn
Central American country.
     Mayor will assist Juanita Riquiac, a local Maya K'iche nurse
who coordinates a Methodist-sponsored community health program in
several villages in the south of the province of El Quiche.
     The two will equip a newly-constructed adobe laboratory that
will house a tuberculosis-testing program. Mayor, a specialist in
microbiology, will train Riquiac and several volunteer village
health promoters how to use a microscope, as well as how to
collect and evaluate sputum samples. She also will train the
health workers in the treatment of tuberculosis.
     Mayor, a founding member of the health commissions of both
the Methodist Church in Cuba and the Cuban Council of Churches,
has been leading health-related workshops for church youth for the
last two years.
     The gatherings usually have focused on sexually-transmitted
diseases and HIV/AIDS. "Cuban youth are well educated and easy to
talk with," she said. "And the church is really opening up to this
kind of ministry, wanting to become a healing presence in the
community."
     Mayor makes no distinction between her professional life as a
physician and her involvement in the church. "God uses me to serve
the community both at work and in the church," she said.
     Nora Boots, a Bolivia-based missionary with the Board of
Global Ministries, coordinates CIEMAL's community-based health
ministries in Latin America and the Caribbean. She called Mayor's
presence in Guatemala "a good example of a south-south
interchange" of knowledge and skills.
     "We already have in the south many of the professional and
technical resources we need to address critical social problems,"
she said, "so we no longer have to go out of the region to look
for the human resources we need."
                              #  #  #

     * Jeffrey is a journalist and United Methodist missionary
based in Central America. 

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