Data from the Cuban Observatory of Citizen Auditing contrasts with the official tally, which counts only 55 deaths
14ymedio, Madrid, December 29, 2025 — Mortality from arboviral diseases in Cuba has reached 8,700 people according to statistical estimates by the Cuban Observatory of Citizen Auditing (OCAC) and Cuba Siglo 21, published this Monday in a report on the collapse of the island’s health system. The report includes data up to mid-December and states that its figure is 185 times higher than the data from the Ministry of Public Health, which at that time had announced 47 deaths. With current figures (55), the unofficial total is 158 times higher than the official one.
The document is based on official data to carry out the calculation. According to the island’s health authorities, around 30% of the population has been infected, which amounts to 2.9 million people affected in a population of 9.7 million inhabitants, the official figure from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI). The lethality of chikungunya is low under normal conditions, at around one death per 1,000 cases. In this situation, which OCAC calls “Scenario A,” 2,900 Cubans would have died. However, this would be the course of the epidemic in countries with good health care.
The report considers two other scenarios. One would be moderate lethality (Scenario B), which is considered the most likely for the island. This corresponds to a health system with limited clinical care, hospital saturation and a high prevalence of co-morbidities. In such contexts, mortality can range from 0.3% to 0.5%, which would mean between 8,700 and 14,500 deaths, depending on severity.
The moderate-lethality scenario is the one considered most likely for the island, which would have a health system with limited clinical care, hospital saturation and a high prevalence of comorbidities
Finally, there would be a case of high lethality (Scenario C), rare and affecting very vulnerable subgroups or collapsed systems, in which mortality would reach 1% or 29,000 people in a population like Cuba’s. “This scenario represents a limit of high epidemiological severity, which may indicate not only the intrinsic lethality of the virus but also the limitations of the health system’s ability to respond to a large-scale epidemic,” the document specifies.
OCAC believes the island is in Scenario B, which could put the figure at 8,700 deaths with the more moderate lethality. Nevertheless, the report notes that even if Cuba were in better condition than presumed (Scenario A), there would still have been 2,900 deaths, which is 61 times higher than the 47 recognized by the Ministry of Public Health at that time.
However, one of the report’s inaccuracies is that it does not separate the two diseases that are, in principle, causing the mortality. The estimate that 30% of the population has been infected was offered by the director of Epidemiology, Francisco Durán, who at the time referred to “nonspecific febrile syndromes” and also did not differentiate the type of virus. In that television appearance, the doctor assured that there was no “new” disease circulating on the island, and that these cases were dengue and chikungunya.
Currently, according to official data, there are 37 deaths from complications of the latter and 18 from dengue, a much more lethal disease to which the same calculations cannot be applied. Since Durán did not provide the percentage of those infected by each disease, it is impossible to make a precise calculation.
Among the criticisms appearing in the report is this one: the lack of transparency. The report attributes to this the long delay in informing the population about the seriousness of an issue that social media and the independent press had been warning about since the summer. Patients multiplied in a perfect breeding ground: power outages that prevented protection against mosquitoes, breeding sites due to water accumulation, lack of garbage collection and the absence of an anti-vector campaign due to limitations in supplies and human resources.
The report emphasizes that the current health crisis is a direct consequence of poor “political decisions sustained over years that have systematically weakened the State’s capacity to protect the life and health of its population.” Among these, it cites underinvestment in health care (approximately 2% of State expenditures) compared to the enormous percentage of State money going to tourism (around 36%), which is managed by the military conglomerate GAESA.
Among the poor decisions, it cites underinvestment in health care (approximately 2%) compared to the enormous percentage of State money going to tourism (around 36%)
This situation has reduced medical staff to a minimum: between 2021 and 2024, the system lost a staggering 30,767 professionals. In addition, since 2019 there have been 7,144 fewer hospital beds. The report also includes data from BioCubaFarma’s report on medication shortages up to January 2025, which noted the absence of 255 of the 395 drugs the company supplies to the national system. Furthermore, authorities stated last week that the basic formulary is made up of 651 medications, of which 62% are produced domestically and the remaining 38% are imported. Of the latter, at least 60% are not available.
“For the Cuban Observatory of Citizen Auditing, the collapse of the health system constitutes a form of structural violence exercised from power. Keeping millions of people in conditions of malnutrition, health defenselessness and permanent exposure to epidemiological risks is not an accident, but the consequence of a model of governance that has ceased to prioritize basic human well-being,” the document states, adding that profound structural changes and an independent assessment of the situation are needed.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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