The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved $56.2 million in financing to Nicaragua for a program to improve health care, benefitting some 2.3 million people living in vulnerable areas. The funds will finance the construction and rehabilitation of 80 health care centers.
The program is expected to help Nicaragua bring down teen birth rates in targeted areas from 28.5 percent to 22 percent and the hospitalization rate for infantile diarrhea from 7.8 per 1,000 children to 6.4 per 1,000 by the end of the five-year program.
The program will help raise health care professionals’ awareness of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ cultures and values and include traditional medicine into treatment protocols. Twelve thousand pregnant Nicaraguan women will be signed up for a safe motherhood plan, focusing on four areas with higher maternal mortality rates.
As a result of the program, the percentage of births at properly equipped health centers is expected to rise from 55 percent to 75 percent amongst other things.
