Deborah Kubisiak
Descriptive epidemiology of waterborne disease in San Maeteo Ixtatán, Guatemala

I spent my summer working with the Ixtatán Foundation, which was created specifically for this town in Guatemala. San Mateo is utterly beautiful, nestled high in the mountains near the Mexican border, 6 hours by bus from the nearest city.  The people there are vivid and strong.  They are Mayan and their first language is Chuj, with Spanish introduced when children reach school.  I was working with
the Foundation's Public Health Action Plan.  In accordance with the community's self-identified needs, the Plan is designed to improve drinking water quality, and introduce both wastewater sanitation and solid waste (trash) management.

My task was to partner with trained healthcare workers in two facilities serving this community to better understand the health status of the population, specifically studying waterborne/diarrheal disease.  Residents of this town of approximately 10,000 people are lucky, in that water is abundant, with springs readily available to provide water for piping to homes.  However, although it looks clean to the naked eye, this water is not always safe for drinking - with a range of possibilities that could introduce fecal contaminants, including leeching from agricultural areas where animals graze and cross-contamination when underground drinking water and sewer pipes are too close to one another.

I am still in the process of analyzing the data I compiled there - every visit to both of the health centers over the course of 1 calendar year.  My work will ideally help identify the appropriate incentives to help reduce the rates of waterborne disease in this community, and serve as a baseline to evaluate the impact of any future initiatives in San Mateo.

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