[The maternal comparison in Cuba. Benefits and education]

About 300 years ago, admitting children in hospitals started to be done and the complicated problems derived from this fact started as well. Those who followed the school of the psychological and even organic benefit and the evolution of the pathological process of the small patient when he received the family warmth and particularly his mother's, found many opposers. In Cuba, before the Revolution triumph in 1959, due to the great amount of illiteracy, inculture and misery of most of the people, a great deal of our children, when they became ill, were delivered in to hands of babblers or ignorants who gave them decoctions of herbs, and witch treatments, all this accompanied by the lack of medical establishments and staff, especially in the provinces, as well as the low standard of life of most of the people who could not afford the stay in the few existing medical centers which did not offer sanitary education or preventive measures either. After the triumph of the Revolution, a deep change in the social, economical and cultural structures took place in the country giving priority to education and people's health. In this last field, health programs, including food and other material cares, were given to the mother in the hospital during the whole day. The advantages of the mother near the child while he was in the hospital are outlined in the present paper, in addition to the education for health that the Cuban mother receives when she is in the hospital with her child, as well as under other circumstances. Significant achievements reached with this program are equally outlined and thus we find the total eradication of severe diseases for childhood, and among the indicators, the fact of having the lowest children mortality rate in Latin America.