PARAGUAY: Health Insurance for All (Registered) Domestics

By Natalia Ruiz Díaz

It took 42 years for social security health care coverage for domestics to extend beyond the limits of the Paraguayan capital.

The measure adopted by the social security institute, the Instituto de Previsión Social, could potentially benefit some 290,000 people – mainly women – working in domestic service throughout this impoverished landlocked South American country of 6.1 million, as well as their families.

"This is a huge stride forward which will help improve the living conditions of domestics in Paraguay," the president of the Association of Domestic Service Workers (AESD), Solana Meza, told IPS.

The challenge now is to get employers to register their domestics with the social security system, which very few have done.

Although health care coverage is obligatory for formal sector workers under Paraguay's labour code, only as of this week do all domestic workers have a right to health insurance - 42 years after the inclusion of that stipulation in the social security institute's charter in 1967.

Domestic workers were not covered when the Instituto de Previsión Social was established in 1943. That situation began to change when a special system for health insurance for domestics went into effect in Asunción in 1967. The aim was to gradually expand it to the whole country. But that never happened.

The social security institute's health care insurance covers maternity, non work-related illness, work-related illness and accidents, surgery, dental care, medication, hospitalisation and a disability subsidy.

Read full article at IPS News