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The World Health Organization (WHO) awarded Cuba a prize for maintaining its validation as a country free from mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, a recognition that contrasts with the chronic shortage of condoms that has affected the island for years and has led to a surge in sexually transmitted infections among the adult population.
The award was presented on Tuesday by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, to Tania Margarita Cruz Hernández, First Deputy Minister of Public Health of Cuba, representing the country.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel celebrated the recognition on the social media platform X and recalled that Cuba was the first country in the world to achieve this milestone in 2015, when the Pan American Health Organization officially certified the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and congenital syphilis.
With this result, Cuba remains among a group of about twenty nations and territories that ensure the elimination of these diseases in newborns, based on universal prenatal care, diagnosis, and free treatment.
However, that achievement in maternal and child health stands in stark contrast to the reality of prevention in the general population.
Since at least 2021, Cuba has been facing a severe and chronic shortage of condoms, a situation acknowledged by the health authorities of the regime itself.
Manuel Romero Placeres, head of the National Program for HIV Control and Prevention, admitted in December 2022 that "the low availability of condoms is the main issue in preventing new infections."
Scarcity created an informal market where condoms were sold for more than 100 Cuban pesos each in July 2023, a prohibitive price for most Cubans.
The impact on public health has been direct: in Guantánamo, health authorities reported an increase in sexually transmitted infections—including syphilis and HIV—linked to the prolonged shortage of condoms in pharmacies and sales points.
In June 2025, authorities from Pinar del Río alerted about a surge in sexually transmitted infections and HIV, with 52.8% of the patients concentrated in the capital municipality, linking the phenomenon directly to the shortage of condoms and their high price in the informal market.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) acknowledged in January 2024 that it left 5% of its budget allocated for Cuba unspent due to its failure to find condom vendors and attributed part of the issue to the restrictions of the U.S. embargo.
Díaz-Canel, true to that argument, took the opportunity of the WHO award announcement to blame the embargo for the limitations of Cuba's healthcare system: "I always wonder how much more we could do for our people and for the world, without the noose of the Genocidal Blockade around our neck."
What the leader did not mention is that the shortage of condoms is also due to structural failures in internal import and distribution, characteristic of a planned economy that has been unable to guarantee basic health supplies to its population for decades.
The paradox is hard to ignore: the regime receives international praise for protecting newborns from HIV and syphilis, while the adult population lacks the most basic means to protect themselves from those same diseases.
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