Havana/The crisis that Cuba is experiencing has a severe impact on the health sector and one of the indicators that reflect this collapse is the infant mortality rate. According to a report this Saturday from the Ministry of Public Health, the country closed 2025 with a figure of 9.9 per 1,000 live births, compared to the 7.1 recorded the previous year, a new drop in birth rates and almost 3 points more in just 12 months.
In the last session of the Cuban Parliament, last December, the prime minister Manuel Marrero had given an outline of the problem, reporting that the rate reached 9.7 and recognized the “deterioration” of that health indicator.
The speed with which this sector has advanced in the country is alarming. The trend that was already observed in mid-2025, when the infant mortality rate increased to 8.2 per 1,000 births, it was then almost one point above what was recorded in the same period of 2024. By then, the arbovirus epidemic – chikungunya and dengue – that is claiming the majority of fatalities among the under 18 years old.
The arbovirus epidemic – chikungunya and dengue – that is claiming the majority of fatalities had not yet spread across the Island.
In Cuba, 68,051 births were registered last year, with 3,108 fewer born than in 2024, according to official figures. “This reduction in birth rates has been a common behavior in recent years and is a consequence of the demographic situation that is evident throughout the country,” the Ministry of Health justified in its report.
The infant mortality rate reflects a significant increase compared to the minimum levels reached by the Island in recent decades. Very far away is that moment in 2018 when the infant mortality rate was an example for the region, when the country registered 3.9 per 1,000 live births, the best figure in the entire American continent.
The same happens with the figures on the maternal mortality rate recorded this year. The health authorities reported that in 2025 it was 44.1 per 100,000 live births, against 40.6 in 2024, and specified that “the increase from one year compared to the other was one maternal death.”
Regarding the total population, Marrero announced in December that it will fall again. At the end of 2024, there were 9.7 million inhabitants – according to official figures – and a year later, about 9.6 million, and it will get worse: the prime minister stated that the projection for the next 25 years is that it will continue to decrease and fall to 7.7 million.
The aging trend is also expected to rise, with an increase in the population over 60 years of age.
The aging trend is also expected to rise, with an increase in the population over 60 years of age, from the current 25.7% to 36.4% by 2050.
The indicators maintain the Island as one of the oldest countries in the region. The Cuban population has decreased, due to migration and the annual persistence of a greater number of deaths than births, according to official data.
Cuba remains mired in a “complex scenario” marked by economic difficulties and an energy crisis – with no long-term solution – to which is now added the health crisis, derived from the current chikungunya and dengue epidemic, which, officially, has claimed the lives of 55 people, most of them minors, but which could amount to 8,700 peopleaccording to statistical calculations by the Cuban Observatory of Citizen Audit (Ocac) and Cuba Siglo 21, released at the end of December in a report on the health collapse on the Island.
