Havana/The infant mortality in Havana registered a dramatic increase in just one year, going from 10.2 per 1,000 live births in 2024 to 14 in 2025. This figure, the highest in the country, was recognized this Friday by the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist PartyLiván Izquierdo Alonso during the last meeting of the Extraordinary Plenary Session of the Provincial Committee of the Party. In the middle of his report, in which he spoke of over-fulfillment of net sales and business profits, he discreetly released this shocking data that demonstrates the collapse in health matters in which the country is mired.
The revelation, although brief, hinted at the magnitude of the problem. During his speech, Izquierdo tried to clarify the figure among the data that there are 4% more family doctor offices in the capital than last year, an advance that in theory should bring health care closer to the population, but that in practice fails to compensate for the growth in mortality.
Last year, the chikungunya and dengue epidemic collapsed the island’s health system, claiming the lives of 8,500 peoplethe vast majority of whom are minors. These diseases caused by arboviruses, which under normal conditions present a relatively low mortality, became a greater threat due to the deteriorated hygienic, sanitary and feeding conditions in the country. The combination of epidemic outbreaks, lack of medical resources, insufficient medicines and the nutritional vulnerability of many children generated a scenario that the authorities now recognize as a health emergency situation never seen before since 2021, the most critical year of covid in Cuba.
Added to this worrying situation is the low birth rate: last year it closed with 3,108 fewer births than in 2024.
Just a month ago, at the end of 2025, the Ministry of Public Health announced the worrying increase in infant mortality in Cuba, which went from 7.1 to 9.7 deaths per thousand live births in a single year, figures that already warned of the acceleration of the crisis throughout the country. In the case of the capital, the figures skyrocketed from 10.2 at the end of 2024 to 14 deaths per thousand births in 2025, a jump that reflects an alarming trend. Since 2020, the capital remains above the national average.
Added to this worrying situation is the low birth rate: last year ended with 3,108 fewer births than in 2024, while the mass exodus that, according to the Cuban demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Camposwould have reduced the population of the Island by 24% in just four years, contributes to changing the demographic structure of the country. The Island ages little by little; More than a third of the inhabitants are over sixty years old, and young people represent an increasingly smaller proportion of the Cuban population – they are the ones who emigrate the most – a reality that also influences the social and health dynamics of the country.
This unprecedented crisis is increasingly impossible to conceal for the regime, which until a few years ago boasted of being a benchmark in health matters in the region. In 2018, the country recorded an infant mortality rate of 3.9 per 1,000 live births, although several experts questioned the veracity of the data, which was by far the best on the American continent. In any case, the contrast with the 2025 figures highlights the brutal degradation of the health situation in less than a decade.
