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29 marzo 2024

The Spanish company ARPA provides the sanitary infrastructure for “Guatemalans for Nutrition”

Malnutrition is a terrible reality that strikes children in Guatemala and compromises their future opportunities, it is an economic and social problem related to underdevelopment. For this reason, the Guatemalans for Nutrition team developed a conceptual model that consists of transforming the causes of malnutrition to guarantee a sustainable solution for this phenomenon that affects 1 out of every 2 children in Guatemala.

To this end, the Castillo Hermanos social program has allocated 116 million quetzales (US$15 million) to comprehensively address the problem.


To this end, it has chosen the Spanish entity ARPA to supply the Nutrimóviles Camps. The ARPA team shares the vision of leading the search for and development of solutions to improve people’s lives. Since 1968 it has been working in the pursuit of excellence through innovation. Its mission is to design and manufacture sustainable solutions that change, or at least improve, the lives of those who use them anywhere in the world. The team of people who make up the company share the values of commitment, innovation, excellence, reliability and versatility.

They work to achieve the maximum social and business benefit through responsibility and a commitment to quality and the satisfaction of users and society in general.

“WE ARE COMMITTED TO MOBILE CLINICS THAT WILL BRING ALL THE BENEFITS OFFERED BY THE PROGRAM TO THE COMMUNITIES FARTHEST FROM THE URBAN CENTERS IN GUATEMALA” DIEGO MONZÓN, CHIEF OF PRIMARY HEALTH CARE

“When we started the Guatemalans for Nutrition program we knew that we had to think of a way in which medical and nutritional care could reach communities whose mobilization is limited by the condition of the roads. Therefore, we bet on mobile clinics that will bring all the benefits offered by the program to the communities farthest from the urban centers in Guatemala, hence the Nutrimóviles Camp was born, which is the center of operations of this initiative”, Diego Monzón, Head of Primary Health Care.

To achieve this, a work plan was defined that consists of five axes, these are:

  1. Primary health care
  2. Nutritional support
  3. Strengthening of the family economy
  4. Access to food
  5. Water and environmental sanitation

INDIVIDUAL

This intervention seeks to affect the biological determinants and its objective is to guarantee preventive health and nutrition care for the families benefiting from the program, with special emphasis on pregnant women and children under five years of age. To achieve this result, the program acquired the “Nutrimóviles Camp” which consists of a series of mobile units in which medical and nutritional care will be provided.

This will be the base of operations of Guatemalans for Nutrition and program users will have access to medical clinics, nutritional clinics and clinical laboratories.

NUTRIMOBILE CAMP

Guatemalans for Nutrition will work to address the different areas of work through innovative infrastructure: the Nutrimóviles Camp. This will provide nutritional and primary health care to pregnant women, women of childbearing age and children under five years of age. It will have operational autonomy and will be equipped with technology that will favor the speed of care.

It is composed of 9 units that are articulated with each other and that, by operating together, guarantee the necessary care for the beneficiaries of the program. The Nutrimóviles Camp is prepared to provide up to 50 medical and nutritional consultations per day, it is installed in an area of 600 square meters and its assembly requires 1,600 man hours. The portfolio of services offered by the Nutrimóviles Camp is:

Registration and taking of vital signs
Nutritional Attention
Medical Attention
Laboratory tests

FAMILIAR

This intervention affects the environmental determinants and seeks to ensure habitability conditions in the beneficiaries’ homes, understanding these conditions as: consumption and access to drinking water, adequate food preparation at home, smoke-free kitchens, backyard animals, promotion of personal and family hygiene, adequate wastewater management. By transforming these determinants, the sustainability of improvements in the nutritional status of program beneficiaries is achieved.

COMMUNITY

This intervention will address economic determinants and its purpose is to create the necessary synergies between local authorities, community, social and religious leaders to establish scenarios that allow the economic growth of communities and generate conditions to increase access to nutritious food.

To this end, we will work with nutritional promoters who will teach the communities how to prepare recipes with nutritious products under the “learning by doing” methodology. In addition, there will be self-management, savings and credit groups that will enable the community to create funds for family investment and develop productive processes that generate income and guarantee their access to food. Finally, there will be semi-hydroponic greenhouses that seek to develop productive chains at the community level.

The program acquired the Nutrimóviles Camp in order to ensure that the necessary attention to break the cycle of malnutrition reaches the communities to be served in the first phase of the program: La Libertad, Cuilco and La Democracia.

“We have carefully designed this program to guarantee a sustainable change in the quality of life of the 3,000 families we have set to reach during this 2023. And we hope that our success will inspire other actors to want to replicate this initiative in other communities in the country,” José Silva, Executive Director of Guatemalans for Nutrition.

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