Care Delivery
Birth and Reproductive Health Center
The Naye Xjaw Birth and Reproductive Health Center is the only facility in Guatemala where Indigenous Maya midwives are formally employed, compensated, and lead the full continuum of care.
Services include:
Prenatal consultations
Safe, respectful births
Postpartum and newborn care
Cervical cancer screening and treatment
Family planning and reproductive health services
Ancestral Curing
Care integrates ancestral knowledge with evidence-based biomedical practice, ensuring both clinical quality and cultural safety.
The center serves as a clinical hub—supporting midwives, strengthening care quality, and providing services that are not accessible in more remote settings.
Continuity Across the Full Spectrum of Care
Care is delivered across the full reproductive health continuum:
Prenatal care
Labor and birth
Postpartum and newborn care
Reproductive health services
This continuity is critical in contexts where fragmentation in the health system leads to delays, gaps in care, and preventable complications.
By maintaining continuity, Naye Xjaw strengthens both outcomes and trust.
Culturally Grounded and Clinically Strong
All care is delivered in the Mam language and grounded in Maya worldviews, traditions, and practices.
At the same time, midwives integrate biomedical knowledge and clinical protocols to ensure safe, effective care.
This is not a compromise between systems.
It is an integration that strengthens both.
Expanding Access, Strengthening Systems
In rural Indigenous communities, access to healthcare is shaped by distance, cost, language, and trust.
This model addresses these barriers by:
Bringing care closer to communities
Ensuring services are culturally and linguistically appropriate
Building relationships of trust between providers and families
Strengthening coordination between community and facility-based care
Care delivery is not only about services—it is about building a system that people can access, trust, and rely on.
Naye Xjaw Maya Midwifery International delivers culturally grounded reproductive healthcare through an integrated system led by Indigenous Maya midwives.
Care is not limited to a single facility.
It is delivered across a continuum that connects the Birth and Reproductive Health Center with mobile clinics serving rural communities.
This ensures that care remains accessible, continuous, and rooted in community.
A System Built Around Midwives
Midwives are the primary healthcare providers within this system.
They lead care across all settings—from home to clinic to community—ensuring continuity, trust, and cultural alignment.
This model recognizes midwives not as assistants, but as skilled professionals responsible for the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare.
Mobile Clinics and Community-Based Care
Care extends beyond the center through mobile clinics operating across rural communities in the Mam region.
These clinics:
Bring prenatal and postpartum care directly to communities
Expand access for families facing geographic and economic barriers
Support community midwives through training and collaboration
Strengthen early detection, follow-up, and continuity of care
Mobile clinics are not a parallel system—they are fully integrated into the broader care model.
Midwives move between community and facility-based care, ensuring that services remain connected and responsive to local realities.
Part of a Larger System
Care delivery is just one component of a broader model.
It is sustained by midwife development, guided by Indigenous leadership, and supported by governance and accountability systems.