Due to the vastly expanded and free medical system, the Zero Hunger, Zero Usury and other programs, chronic malnutrition in children under five has been cut in half, with chronic malnutrition in children six to twelve cut by two-thirds. Now it is rare to see kids with visible malnutrition, removing another preoccupation off mothers.
Schools and businesses never closed during the covid pandemic, and Nicaragua's health system has been among the most successful in the world addressing covid. The country has the lowest number of covid deaths per million inhabitants among all the countries of the Americas.
Nicaragua has also built a system of parks, playgrounds, and other free recreation where mothers can take their children.
Throughout the school system, the Ministry of Education promotes a culture of equal rights and non-discrimination. It has implemented the new subject "Women's Rights and Dignities," which teaches students about women's right to a life without harassment and abuse and the injustices of the patriarchal system. Campaigns were launched to promote the participation of both mom and dad in a child's education, such as emphasizing that attending school meetings or performances are shared responsibilities of both parents.
Sandinista Free Health Care System Liberates women
In stark contrast to Nicaragua's neoliberal years, with its destruction of the medical system, in contrast to other Central American countries and the United States with their privatized health care for profit, the Sandinistas have established community-based, free, preventive public health care. Accordingly, life expectancy has risen from 72 years in 2006 to 77 years today, now equal to the US level.
Health care units number over 1700, including 1,259 health posts and 192 health centers, with one third built since 2007. The country has 77 hospitals, with 21 new hospitals built, and 46 existing hospitals remodeled and modernized. Nicaragua provides 178 maternity homes near medical centers for expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies or from rural areas to stay during the last weeks of pregnancy.
The United States is the richest country in the Americas, while Nicaragua is the third poorest. Yet in the US since 2010, over 100 rural hospitals have closed, and fewer than 50% of rural women have access to perinatal services within a 30-mile drive from their home. This has disproportionately affected low-income women, particularly Black and Latino ones.
Nicaragua has equipped 66 mobile clinics, which gave nearly 1.9 million consultations in 2020. These include cervical and breast cancer screenings, helping to cut the cervical cancer mortality rate by 34% since 2007. The number of women receiving Pap tests has increased from 181,491 in 2007 to 880,907 in 2020.
In the pre-Sandinista era, a fourth of pregnant women gave birth at home, with no doctor. There were few hospitals and pregnant women often had to travel rough dirt roads to reach a clinic or hospital. Now women need not worry about reaching a distant hospital while in labor because they can reside in a local maternity home for the last two weeks of their pregnancies and be monitored by doctors. In 2020, 67,222 pregnant women roomed in one of these homes, and could be accompanied by their mothers or sisters. As a result, 99% of births today are in medical centers, and maternal mortality fell from 115 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 to 36 in 2020. These are giant steps forward in the liberation of women.
Contrary to the indifference to women in the US, Nicaraguan mothers receive one month off work before their baby is born, and two months off after; even men get five days off work when their baby is born. Mothers also receive free milk for 6 months. Men and women get five days off work when they marry.
The Question of Abortion Rights
The law making abortion illegal, removing the "life and health of the mother" exception, was passed in the National Assembly under President Bolaà ±os in 2006. There had been a well-organized and funded campaign by Catholics all over Latin America as well as large marches over the previous two years in Nicaragua in favor of this law.
The law, supported by 80% of the people, was proposed immediately before the presidential election as a vote-getting ploy by Bolaà ±os. The Sandinistas were a minority in the National Assembly at the time, and the FSLN legislators were released from party discipline for the vote. The majority abstained, while several voted in favor. The law has never been implemented nor rescinded.
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