1,800 Dead Babies: US Sanctions and Cuban Tourism Greed Exposed

The data from CEPR shows a healthcare system in total freefall. For decades, Cuba's low infant mortality rate was a point of pride for the country, often beating the United States in the rankings. That started to change in 2017. That's when the Trump administration pivoted to a 'maximum pressureLoaded Language' strategy, a policy that both the Biden and second Trump administrations decided to keep. According to the CEPR, if mortality levels had just stayed where they were in 2018, about 1,800 children who died over the last eight years would still be alive today. A jump from 4.0 to 9.9 deaths per 1,000 births is a massive outlier for this part of the world, where these numbers usually get better over time.

[Infant Mortality Rate (IMR)] is the number of babies who die before their first birthday for every 1,000 live births. It's the most common way to measure a country's overall health and stability.

We can see the damage through specific US policies. In 2017, the State Department launched the Cuba Restricted Entities List, which blacklisted 180 companies tied to the Cuban military. Then, in 2021, the US put Cuba back on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. Treasury Department records show this acts like a global 'scarlet letter.' International banks are so afraid of the label that they block even legal payments for medical supplies. These moves helped choke Cuba’s economy to a tiny 0.4% annual growth between 2020 and 2024, while the rest of the Caribbean grew at an average of 3.2%.

“Approximately 1,800 infant deaths would have been avoided if Cuba’s IMR had remained stable at its 2018 level of 4.0 per 1,000 live births.”

But the CEPR report doesn't really follow the money once it gets to Havana. While US sanctions definitely hurt the island's bottom line, the way the Cuban government spends what it has left shows a strange set of priorities. Data from Cuba’s own statistics office, ONEI, shows that even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state-run military conglomerate GAESA kept pouring billions into luxury hotel projects. In years when doctors didn't even have basic stitches or antibiotics, the government's investment in tourism was roughly five times higher than what it spent on health and social services combined.

[GAESA] is a massive business group run by the Cuban military. It was headed by the late Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja and controls about 60% of the island’s economy, including the most profitable parts of tourism and banking.

It isn't just about internal spending, though. The US also went after Cuba’s biggest source of cash: its medical missions. Washington pressured countries like Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador to cancel their contracts for Cuban doctors. This program used to bring the Cuban state between $6 billion and $8 billion every year. The US calls these missions 'forced labor,' but cutting them off destroyed the health budget’s most important lifeline. The result is a system that can’t afford to fix ventilators or even keep vaccines cold.

The truth is that there's enough blame for everyone. The US uses economic 'coercive measures' to try and force a regime change, and as the CEPR data shows, that strategy has a real body count. At the same time, Cuban leaders use these sanctions as a convenient excuse to hide their own failures and the way they've enriched the military elite. We don't know exactly how much of the blame lies with each side because Cuba keeps its military spending a secret. No one, not even its own citizens, is allowed to see the books.

As a fuel blockade tightens in 2026 and stops Venezuelan oil from reaching the island, the healthcare sector is getting even worse. For the average person, the 'Cuban medical miracle' is officially over. The infant mortality rate is now nearly double that of the US, which sits at about 5.4 according to the CDC. The next thing to watch will be the 2026 maternal mortality rates. Experts expect they'll follow the same tragic path as the infant deaths.