child under twelve months is sick, his mother may stay at home fifteen days to take care of him without loss of salary.

Nation-wide effort

The part played by the people constitutes the newest aspect of recent health developments. Participation in nationwide efforts against disease is enthusiastic. The malaria campaign is a case in point; everything is sprayed and any person showing the slightest signs of fever is immediately tested for malaria. In Oriente, a massive anti-malaria campaign has been carried out. In Havana, young people join inspection and spraying squads under the direction of specialized workers to destroy mosquitos.

Local community organizations also work on anti-TB campaigns. A number of different committees round up people to have their X-rays taken by mobile units to detect TB, positive cases are followed up. The reluctance to take certain health measures is counteracted by the people serving in political organizations. "Tuberculosis is not only an infectious disease but also a psychological problem." said one doctor, "therefore, political organizations are responsible for working with the clinics and hospitals."

The effort to improve health conditions in Cuba has become the general responsibility of the people. Nation-wide TV and radio campaigns instruct parents how to recognize symptoms and urge them to bring children for treatment to the local polyclinics. Results are already visible. In 1960, polio struck 330 people. Six years later the disease had been completely wiped out. Before 1958, as many as 10% of the children died of gastro-enteritis. The figure has been more than halved and is expected to be further lowered this year. The transmission of malaria has already been interrupted throughout the country. The Pan American Health Organization, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) have permanent teams stationed in Cuba and send men once or twice a year to check each area. Finally, rural hospitals have played a crucial role in reducing the prevalence of some diseases and in stamping out others.

WORLD HEALTH

The Magazine of the World Health Organization

At the Emilio Barcenas health centre in the remote village of Mayari Arriba: as every where

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Church and Latin Culture a woman had no way to prevent herself from getting pregnant and no rights her husband or father was bound to respect. Prostitution flourished since it was one of the few ways a woman by herself could survive in the city.

Eleven years have passed since Fidel's guerrillas chased Batista cut of Cuba and the Revolution is still reaching some new people. An eighteen year old woman we met on the Isle of Youth suddenly found herself one year ago in school for the first time after 17 years of helping her mother with the household chores. In the normal course of things she would have gone on doing chores at home until she married when she'd settle down doing chores somewhere elsc. Instead there's a revolution in Cuba and when she heard over the radio about a free boarding school where she could get an elementary education as well as learn the operation of farm machinery she went down to the radio station and filled out an application. Soon she was part of the vast young community on the Isle of Youth, experimenting with the abolition of money and the creation of Cuba's first really communist region. When we asked her how she felt about leaving her home to drive tractors and read and write instead, she exclaimed, "You know I just couldn't go on like that!"

Women's lives have been changing like that for a decade. Most women in Cuba are now members of the Federation of Cuban Women, an organization founded in 1950 to smash the old mold into which women were forced. "A woman who spends all of her time taking care of her hushand and children is still a slave" says the Federation's regional director in Santa Clara. In every Cuban neighborhood women get together to discuss topics ranging from Jose Marti to day

care, and from the struggle in Vietnam to problems of picking citrus fruits. Larger units of the Federation organize women's work brigades to combat on one front or another Cuba's number one problem: underdevelopment.

From the first years of the Revolution, many projects brought a new mobility and independence to Cuban women. In the antiilliteracy campaign of 1961 thousands of young women and men, most of them teenagers, left their parents' homes to live temporarily with illiterate families and teach them to read and write. Catholic parents in a society where prostitution and gambling had been major industries feared the loss of their daughters' virginity and were unwilling to permit it. To calm everyone down, Fidel gave a reassuring speech guaranteeing proper behavior.

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The necessity for permanent military alertness put many women in the militia and the army. The need for an educated work force created a scholarship program to cover all expenses. Women, seldom

educated at all let alone at universities before the Revolution, have become half the student population. Many women are studying medicine, science, and engineering. Women belonging to the Young Communist Union or the Communist Party are especially mobile, studying one week in Havana, off to a work project in Oriente or Camaguey the next.

Work in voluntary agricultural brigades picking citrus fruit, tending coffee plants, and aiding in the sugar harvest has permitted women to live in campamentos with other women away from their families for months at a time. It was at first difficult for many Cuban men to accept the idea of their wives, sisters, and daughters going to school and going out to work. Many objected vociferously, and attempts to order their women to stay at home were

not uncommon. But with the opening of education and work to women, the woman was not so totally dependent on the man in her life. For the first time a woman with an arbitrary, dogmatic husband could consider divorcing him. Cuban divorces soared as the Revolution progressed. Not because all husbands and wives were now incompatible, but because for the first time this became a possibility. As Celia, a Havana factory worker volunteering in the cane harvest explained, "Work for the Revolution is more important than my marriage." the family disappear as a result? del says, "only love will hold the family of the future together."

Will

Fi

In

Over and over women described their excitement about being independent contributors to society. "Before the revolution, I had thirteen kids and had to remain at home," a mountain woman from Oriente explained to us. "Now I work in a cafeteria in the afternoon and study at night." Luisa and Angela, former housewives in their forties, are now nurses. They spoke enthusiastically of their busy schedule, adding that they volunteered as citrus fruit pickers on week ends. their free time, they help the Federation recruit other women to work outside their homes, and as members of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) they lead political education discussions. A Havana housewife, mother of two members of the Union of Young Communists, told us that at first she didn't understand the revolution. Now she is block chairman of the CDR and does volunteer work every afternoon making protective goggles for cane cutters, or assisting at the sugar mill. The energetic dedication

of women like these has been crucial in Cuba's leap from underdevelopment.

The mass freeing of women from the home for socially necessary labor began the transition from a capitalist domestic economy in which each woman individually carried out the chores of child care,

washing. id cooking, to a sucialist one where society as a whole will take ol. the se responsibilities. Centers for free daily or weekly child care, circulos infant les. have been established all over the country. In these centers, children as young as two "onths are fed, clothed, educated and entertained. Schools, factories, and experimental commities offer free meals. Moreover, in a few communities and in all volunteer cimpimentos free laundry services are now vailable. Even though there are not yet nough of these facilities, nearly every girl and woman we encountered was confident that circulos would soon be available for her children.

Many women in the lenceremos Brigade were particularly interested in finding out to what extent women in Cuba have the freedom to use birth control and to obtain abortions. One of the three doctors in a rural hospitl in rente explained to us that birth control diaphragris and 1.U.D. 's) as well as all other forms of redical and dental care is not only availble but free on de

1. a.d. No carpaign urging woren to use birth control is waged, however, because overpopulation is not a problem in Cuba; on the contrary they feel a population increase is necessar, to meet the demands of the developing economy.

Abortions are available on demand for women who get pregnant with an I.U.D. in place. However in other cases it is often necessary for the woman to get permission from her husband or father, for the man is still considered chiefly responsible for the children. In cases where there are special presless and permission is not possible, Persson ray be waived. Many Cubans think that hertions are hazardous to the rother's in others still regard abortions as in un hild.

210.5 WO at will also be interesthat natt childbirth (sucond in the 6.5.) is the nor Praebered and physical trainonth before the woman In the S e avilable if

Despite the great progress rad In incor porating women into Cuban society as equals, contradictions, such as the cotinued existence of separate jobs fo: men and women, remain. Women star the circulos, for example, partly because are needed for heavy manual work, but also as a result of a strongly entrenched myth about a woman's innate ability to raise children. Cubans call it "rother love." Another example is the fact that women working the cane fields usually pile rather than cut cane -- including the physically fit female athletes who won medals in the Central American Olynpics in Panama.