Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital, one of the 4 centers where assisted reproduction is performed in Cuba. (Photo. Cuban newspaper)
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Only 6% of couples with infertility problems in Cuba manage to have a child after undergoing treatments under the Infertile Couple Care Program created by the Ministry of Public Health to encourage birth in the country, according to data provided by the official newspaper Rebel Youth.
During the last 3 years, from 2018 to 2020, statistics show that of 179,625 couples attended by Cuban specialists only 10,968 were able to conceive a child.
Rebel Youth indicates that this birth rate was achieved “despite financial limitations due to economic restrictions by the US government and the social immobility decreed by the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020.”
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | Total | |
| Infantile care attended | 64.154 | 89.697 | 25.774 | 179.625 |
| Births achieved | 2.553 | 4.773 | 3.642 | 10.968 |
| Success rate | 3.9% | 5.3% | 14.1% | 6.1% |
Although on the other hand it is recognized that the Infertile Couple Care Program still has debts so that it can be considered a good one. For example, “there are still organizational deficiencies to guarantee the assisted referral of couples to other levels of care.” This means that after care in the primary sector the situation becomes more complex and problems begin to arise if more specialized care is required, including psychological care.
The point is that only 4 hospitals in all of Cuba have the capacity to perform “high-tech assisted reproduction techniques.” These hospitals are located in Havana (2): Hermanos Ameijeiras and Ramón González Coro; Cienfuegos (1): Gustavo Aldereguía Lima and Holguín (1): Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
In these institutions, conventional in vitro fertilization, by egg donation and by intracytoplasmic injection is applied; while “other innovative techniques will also be available soon.”
The infertility of a couple is defined as a health problem characterized by the impossibility of carrying a pregnancy to a successful term as long as both members of the couple have searched for it for 12 consecutive months.
The causes of infertility can be common or specific to each sex. Age, ovulatory and utero-tubal factors predominate in females; while, in men, sperm defects. Some factors can be prevented from Primary Health Care and in other cases it is necessary to go to assisted reproduction techniques.
Precisely these treatments such as in vitro fertilization are not usually very cheap, but they do have high success rates. Statistically, the highest success rate to have a baby is achieved with several treatments, that is, between 3 and 4 cycles of In Vitro Fertilization.
In the US, the average probability in reproductive centers to have a baby (live birth) in one cycle, in a woman under 35 years of age with her own eggs, is 40.5%.
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