The official press reproduces a post by Roberto Morales Ojeda that falsely says there has been a “148% increase in the last year.”
14ymedio, Madrid, September 15, 2026 – Roberto Morales Ojeda, secretary of Organization of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), came up with the idea of writing a post last week to denounce the effects of the new U.S. sanctions on the regime, distorting one of the figures most sensitive to the population: infant mortality. The brief text, which might have gone largely unnoticed had it remained on his social media accounts, has been on the front page of the newspaper Tribuna de La Habana since yesterday, a piece of content that highlights the inability of the official press to respond to false information. More than that: it adopts it as its own and elevates it to the status of news.
Morales Ojeda could easily have spoken about the repercussions of U.S. policies without departing from the truth. The shortage of fuel for transporting patients and the sick, and the shortage of electricity needed to keep essential hospital equipment running, are examples of a worsening of the already difficult conditions under which the healthcare system has operated for decades, and which stem from the oil blockade. But the official has chosen rampant falsehood.
“In the last year, infant mortality in Cuba has increased by 148%, going from 4 to 9.9 per thousand live births,” Morales Ojeda says in the post. This is the figure the authorities reported in January of this year, corresponding to 2025. Although it is likely that this figure could worsen in 2026, it is currently unknown. But this is not the greatest problem with his presentation. The official figures are public and cannot be modified retroactively. In 2024, infant mortality was already far from 4 per thousand, a number that requires looking much further back, to the best years in the Island’s recent history.
In 2024, infant mortality was already far from 4 per thousand, a number that requires looking much further back, to the best years in the Island’s recent history
Cuba was, because of the widespread implementation and expansion throughout the population of public health programs such as Pami (National Maternal and Child Care Program), one of the countries with the best infant mortality figures in the region, even ahead of the U.S. In 2000, the Island began to stabilize the relatively poor figures from the years of the Special Period and remained for several years at around 6 deaths per thousand live births. Starting in 2006, things began to improve significantly, and by 2008 the rate had reached 4.7 per thousand, continuing to improve until the record years: 2017 and 2018, when it reached the 4 that the official now recalls.
Everything changed in 2019, when it rose by one point, but the major rupture came in 2021. The pandemic hit the healthcare sector very hard. That year, not only was the figure unusually high for the Island, at 7.9 per thousand, but there were truly dramatic figures. This was the case in Ciego de Ávila, where 13.8 deaths per thousand live births were recorded, more than double the previous year and even higher than the figures for Mexico (11) and El Salvador (12). On that occasion, the province’s official newspaper, Invasor, sought responsibility and found it much closer than in Washington.
“Low birth weight and prematurity contribute to morbidity and mortality in the territory, fundamentally associated with high blood pressure, intrauterine growth retardation and adolescent pregnancy. Many babies arrive at the Neonatology service with extremely low weights (less than 1,500 and 1,000 grams), putting their lives at risk and extending their hospital stay,” said Luis Carmenate Martínez, head of the gynecology and obstetrics department in the province and a Pami official.
The physician warned of the lack of a health promotion and education system. The working groups are incomplete and there is a lack of support from the sector, he added
Those statements were spontaneously answered by a physician, Ernesto René, who worked for 34 years in Pami, and who denounced that the intersectoral work of the program had begun to be dismantled 20 years ago. “Today it does not work,” he warned. The physician warned of the lack of a health promotion and education system. The working groups are incomplete and there is a lack of support from the sector, he added. “Professionals with experience in PAMI have been lost due to completely misguided policies and decisions by the province’s directors, lacking entirely in science and experience.”
It surprised no one that, following the pandemic, these figures continued, and Cuba was unable to return to the rates it had achieved for decades. In 2022, the figure reached 7.5; in 2023 and 2024 it declined slightly to 7.1; and in 2025 it deteriorated severely, reaching the 9.9 cited by Morales Ojeda. That is 39.9% higher than the previous year, although not the 148% claimed by the official when going back to figures from eight years ago. The numbers come from the National Office of Statistics and Information, but Tribuna de La Habana has not deemed it necessary to correct the party’s secretary of Organization and former Public Health minister, who speaks of a “punishment that is taking it out on the innocent” by resorting to a false figure.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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