02/24/2026
Hogar Materno - A Cuban maternity home
The maternity home, staffed with an around-the-clock nurse, houses expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies. There are approximately 209 maternity homes throughout Cuba, one per each municipality. Many of the residents are admitted for malnutrition, one of the deleterious effects of the 40-year-old United States economic embargo against Cuba. Cuba addresses this issue by providing 2,800 calories per day for every pregnant woman, prenatal vitamins and three meals a day for maternity home residents (Bernal 2001). Other common high-risk factors of the women at Hogar Materno were diabetes, anemia and twins. The residents, ages 22 to 32, ranged in gestational age from 20 to 39 weeks. Once labor begins, the women are driven 40 minutes to the hospital for delivery in Pinar del Rio, the closest neighboring city (Noda Gonzalez 2001).
