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The Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) of Cuba published on Wednesday in the Official Gazette No. 40 Ordinary of 2026 Resolution 174/2025, a regulation that governs the organization and operation of sexual and reproductive health services with a focus on adolescent pregnancy, while the issue remains unresolved on the island.
The regulation, approved in 2025 but published now, requires that each case of teenage pregnancy be reported to various state sectors to promote care and social prevention, involving ministries, agencies, and community organizations.
In a press conference, the Deputy Minister of Public Health, Dr. Julio Guerra Izquierdo, acknowledged that the situation remains alarming: "The adolescent fertility rate or the percentage of adolescents who have become pregnant in recent years is around 19%."
The official acknowledged a slight improvement but without triumphalism: "There has been a 1% decrease between the year 2024 and the year 2025; we are still not happy with what has been happening."
According to official data from Minsap, 18.2% of all pregnant women in Cuba in 2025 were teenagers.
Guerra Izquierdo also acknowledged the underlying causes: "We have evidently perceived that there are still some gaps in knowledge, and also in the family's perception of risk."
The structural figures are even more alarming. According to the 2024 Demographic Yearbook of the ONEI, the adolescent fertility rate was 47.1 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, and 11,962 out of the 71,358 babies born that year had mothers under the age of 20. Additionally, 327 births were to mothers under 15 years old.
A particularly concerning fact: the 64.5% of teenage pregnancies in Cuba involve adult fathers, according to the Gender Observatory of Alas Tensas, based on data from the ONEI.
The head of the Maternal and Child Care Program (PAMI), Dr. Caterina Echivás, explained that the resolution aims to ensure that adolescents can choose from at least three contraceptive methods: “We need to give adolescents, and the entire population, but in this case specifically adolescents, the opportunity to choose among three or more methods for their planning and for their sexual and reproductive health.”
However, Echivás acknowledged that the availability of those supplies partly depends on external donations: "We are working with the pharmaceutical industry, along with the organizations of the United Nations that support us in the donation and supply of contraceptives, the procurement of condoms, and the acquisition of intrauterine contraceptives."
This dependency is not new. The chronic shortage of contraceptives in Cuba has intensified since 2018 and in 2025 pushed young people to resort to illegal abortions with misoprostol or homemade concoctions.
More than 70% of essential medications were missing from Cuban pharmacies in December 2025, directly affecting the mother-and-child programs in the country.
Resolution 174/2025 is the first specific regulation that comprehensively governs sexual and reproductive health services for adolescents in Cuba, but critics argue that a decree does not address the underlying issues: shortages of supplies, deficits in sexual education, and the phenomenon of adults impregnating minors, which in 2024 accounted for nearly two-thirds of registered cases.
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