El Salvador Health and Welfare
Nurse in rural health post administering an injection
Courtesy Inter-American Development Bank
Insufficient income had a serious adverse effect on the
general health and vitality of the rural population. In the mid1980s , El Salvador was among the countries of the Western
Hemisphere most seriously affected by malnutrition. During the
1970s, the poorer 50 percent of the population consumed, on
average, only 63 percent of required calories and 56 percent of
required protein according to accepted international guidelines
for adequate nutrition; the overall population averaged 77.2
percent of the minimum standard for caloric consumption and 83.6
percent of the standard for protein consumption. Anemia,
riboflavin deficiencies, and vitamin A and other vitamin
deficiencies were widespread among the population.
Malnutrition was particularly prevalent among young children.
Even before the upset caused by civil conflict during the 1980s,
approximately 48.5 percent of children under five years of age
suffered from mild malnutrition, 22.9 percent from moderate
malnutrition requiring medical attention to cure, and 3.1 percent
from severe malnutrition requiring hospitalization for adequate
recovery. Stated differently, 80 percent of children suffered
from at least first-degree malnutrition--10 to 24 percent
underweight--and 5 percent suffered from third-degree
malnutrition--over 40 percent underweight. Because pregnant women
usually lacked proper nutrition as well, many children were born
underweight and undernourished.
The poverty responsible for inadequate nourishment among
campesinos was also reflected in substandard homes and living
conditions. In some regions, land for housing and domestic life
was limited to an absolute minimum by the expansion of private
estates. Some closely crowded groups of huts were strung along
the remaining narrow strips of public lands bordering highways
and rivers or erected on narrow peripheries between the fenced
boundaries of estates closed to resident laborers and the nearest
public road, in an arrangement called "fence housing."
Rural homes typically sheltered four or more persons. They
usually had one, sometimes two, rooms, dirt floors, walls of
adobe brick or bahareque (wood frame with a mud or rubble
fill) or of poles and straw, and thatched or tiled roofs. The
kitchen commonly was in a separate shelter or located under an
extension of the main roof. Even in the 1980s, almost none of the
rural population had access to sewage systems. Some 12 percent
had latrines or septic tanks, but 80 percent had no sanitation
facilities. Surface water was seriously polluted by agriculture
and industry, yet 60 percent of the rural population depended on
rivers and streams and/or rainwater and 22 percent on wells for
their water needs. Some 93 percent were without electricity and
used kerosene lamps or candles for light and wood or charcoal for
cooking and heat.
Conditions such as these, combined with malnutrition,
produced high rates of chronic illness and high mortality,
especially in infants and young children. Although families of
three to four children were considered the most desirable size,
rural women actually had an average of six to eight children and,
given the high infant death rate (about 120 to 125 per 1,000 live
births) often had twice as many pregnancies. In general, about 30
percent of all deaths per year were of children under the age of
one, and with another 14 percent occurred in the age-group from
one to four.
Several diseases posed particularly serious problems. Malaria
was of major concern in rural departments, with morbidity ranges
between 4,100 and 1,800 per 100,000 inhabitants in the 1980s.
Water-borne diseases were also particularly common and one of the
major factors affecting mortality. In the 1970s and 1980s, the
leading causes of death included enteritis and other diarrheal
diseases, as well as pneumonia and other respiratory diseases,
such as bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma. Nutritional
insufficiencies, perinatal complications, infections, and
parasitic diseases also took a high toll, especially among
children (see
table 3, Appendix). As of 1987, El Salvador had
reported sixteen cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome
(AIDS), the lowest total of any Central American country except
Belize. Of the sixteen, six victims had died.
High mortality rates reflected the fact that health care
itself was limited and medical facilities for the general
population inadequate. This condition was aggravated by the civil
disturbances of the 1980s. The 1971 census indicated that there
were three doctors and seventeen hospital beds for every 10,000
persons. In 1984 ten general hospitals and twelve health centers,
in addition to several hundred other community posts and
dispensaries, provided between 0.5 and 1.5 beds per 1,000
inhabitants outside the San Salvador metropolitan area. Some
rural regions did not have any hospital facilities. Where rural
hospitals existed, health care personnel frequently were hampered
in their work by limited equipment and supplies and unsanitary
conditions. These conditions made it difficult to meet even the
ordinary medical needs of the rural population. For example, most
births took place at home, sometimes with the assistance of
relatives or neighbors, but often unassisted.
Rural areas were deprived of sufficient government-financed
social programs in part because of a longstanding governmental
preference to keep taxes low and to concentrate the provision of
services in San Salvador. The situation was exacerbated by
increased military spending during the 1980s, as the budget
allocations for the Ministry of Public Health and Social Services
declined in real terms. Similarly, the number of medical
personnel available to work in rural areas declined drastically
after the Medical School of the National University was closed in
1980, ending the flow of interns, who had provided much of the
medical care in the countryside. In addition, many doctors and
other health workers in rural areas either relocated or abandoned
their efforts as a result of the intensifying civil conflict in
the 1980s.
The government, particularly through the Ministry of Public
Health and Social Services, recognized as national priorities the
need for improvement of health services, control of malaria,
improved sanitation and drinking water quality, and increased
child survival. It pledged to follow various lines of action
toward these ends.
Social security was another government benefit to which rural
Salvadorans had far less access than urban dwellers. The social
security system was administered by the Salvadoran Social
Security Institute, an autonomous institution first established
in 1949. Its medical benefits and pension system, implemented in
1969, covered employees in industry and commerce but excluded
agricultural workers, domestics, casual employees, and civil
servants. The latter were covered by a different system. The
institute also administered a number of hospitals throughout the
country. Individuals (and their spouses) covered by the system
were entitled to sickness and maternity benefits, care for workrelated injuries, and pensions on the basis of old age or
disability. The system was funded by payroll deductions from the
insured, as well as by employer and government contributions.
Data as of November 1988
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