CUBA-DEVELOPMENT: UN Increases Social Aid to Cuba

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 2 1996 (IPS) - United Nations agencies are increasing the flow of aid funds to Cuba to protect the gains made in the social sphere over 30 years from the country’s current economic problems. Millions of dollars have been earmarked for reproductive health programmes, agricultural projects and children’s needs.

Rainer Rosenbaum, director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) in Cuba, says agency plans to funnel three million dollars into a programme on reproductive health and sexual risk to operate in the years 1997-2001.

This followed a workshop last week at the University of Havana’s Centre for Demographic Studies that studied all aspects of the issue and defined areas where UNFPA could provide technical and financial support. At the same time, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) allocated 350,000 dollars for a cattle project designed to help Cuba’s population of 11 million move toward self-sufficiency in food.

Rosenbaum said the UNFPA cooperation programme will focus on sex education (primarily among the young), technical advising, the training of specialists and the supply of some contraceptives. UNFPA ranks Cuba in group “C” along with Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay and developed nations as a country not in need of substantial support in family planning.

The five-year programme was approved less than a month after the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) decided to provide an additional three million dollars for financing UNFPA activities in Cuba. Most of the funds will go toward maternal-infant health and family planning, and will be added to the 1990-96 UNFPA programme in Cuba, bringing the total to 6.9 million dollars.

The UNDP decision to provide additional funding is due to the fact that Cuba has no other donors in population control, and lacks the necessary foreign currency to meet all birth control needs. Local authorities are concerned at the increase in abortions – 56.5 for every 100 births in 1995 – and at the rise in the cases of sexually transmitted disease.

The U.N. International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) also approved a five million dollar cooperation programme in September for the 1997-2001 period.

UNICEF will concentrate on maintaining universal access to basic health care and high quality primary education, and on moving toward universal access to adequate sewage services and water supply.

Under the cooperative scheme, UNICEF will contribute help to “maintain the current system of basic services at acceptable levels, and assist the government with alternatives by improving the the use of limited existing resources.”

Along with such development projects, the United Nations is also underlining the need for allocating funds designed to maintain the quality of life of the Cuban population.

UNFPA sources acknowledged that Cuba meets the levels in terms of social indicators set as goals at the 1994 World Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo.

Local and foreign experts want to protect Cuba’s infant and maternal mortality rates, life expectancy, universal access to free education and health care and equality between men and women from being affected by the crisis that has gripped the country since the beginning of the decade.

Statistics produced at the end of last year put Cuban life expectancy at birth at 74.7 years, while the maternal mortality rate was 32.6 per 100,000 live births, and infant mortality was 9.4 for every 100,000 live births.

Juan Carlos Alfonso, an expert with the National Statistics Office, said that one of the greatest challenges Cuban authorities must face is how to protect these levels in a country with a developing economy in crisis.