Age doesn’t matter in service.

Maria Santos lives in the village of Shamil in Guatemala. She is 90 years old. Mrs. Maria Santos remembers as a child when she accompanied her mother on visits to pregnant women. In 1996 she received training as a midwife at the Coban Community Health Center. Even though she couldn’t read or write, she learned a lot about attending to pregnancies and childbirth. “It gives me great satisfaction and joy knowing that people trust me and call me from various communities to attend women in childbirth,” Mrs. Santos said. She continued, “I have attended over 500 births and, thank God, I never made a mistake. Also I have had the satisfaction of attending the births of many of my grandchildren.”

She recently began training her daughter Maria Cuc Xol to take over her work. Thank you Kristen, Lizbeth, and Majo, from Maria and Maria, for the year of midwife training and teaching from Medical Teams!  They do very amazing work to help people in communities have healthy pregnancies and childbirths.