Guatemala

Expanding Access to Care

To ensure that every child has access to care close to home, we equip the providers within our patients’ communities with skills and resources to deliver high-quality care. We build the needed capacity by harnessing the talent and resources that exist within the country, usually in the bigger cities, to train providers in under-resourced areas, where most patients lack access to care.​

Hospital Juan Pablo II in Guatemala City is where Operation Smile’s education partners and comprehensive care center are located. We also work at Regional Hospital San Benito in Petén and the Regional Hospital in Escuintla.

We have established a second comprehensive care center in San Andrés, Petén to provide access to non-surgical care for patients living in the country’s north, an area where there is a high prevalence of cleft conditions. ​

Five-Year Vision

Over the next five years, Operation Smile will deliver surgery to around 2,000 patients in Guatemala. We will provide consultations for 11,000 patients.​

In order to develop self-sufficiency at spoke hospital partners, Operation Smile will combine care delivery programs with education and training programs that build Guatemala’s surgical workforce. We will train five cleft teams in quality cleft care to establish ongoing hospital-based programs. We will seek to expand our local volunteer base to 160. Operation Smile will offer American Heart Association training courses and create the first plastic surgery residency program in Guatemala.​

Our Partners

Operation Smile’s close collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Guatemala has allowed us to expand cleft care across the country.​

Our partnership with the American Heart Association enables us to deliver AHA training courses, such as Basic Life Support (BLS), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS).