World Health Organisation: Country Profile on Cuba

The situation in Cuba since 1989 has been characterized, above all, by a profound economic crisis that has affected virtually all spheres of national life. The severity of the crisis is evidenced by the fact that between 1989 and 1993 the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell 35% and exports declined by 75%. The two determining factors underlying the crisis are well known. One is the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, and the other is the economic embargo the Government of the United States of America imposed on Cuba more than 30 years ago.