Bringing New Life Into a Country Running on Empty: Cuba's Expectant Mothers Face the Dark

A Nation That Can't Keep the Lights On

Cuba has endured three complete nationwide grid collapses in March 2026 alone. Let that sink in. Not flickering lights or the odd brownout, but the entire electrical grid buckling like a deckchair in a hurricane. The most recent, on 21 March, was triggered by a failure at the Nuevitas thermoelectric plant in Camagüey province. For the roughly 10 million people on the island, daily blackouts of up to 16 hours have become grimly routine. In the interior, it is worse still.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, around 32,800 women are preparing to give birth.

No Oil, No Power, No Easy Answers

The immediate cause of the crisis is brutally simple: Cuba has not received oil from foreign suppliers for approximately three months. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has stated the country produces only about 40% of the fuel it needs domestically. The Trump administration cut off Venezuelan oil supplies following the removal of Nicolás Maduro from power on 3 January and has threatened tariffs on any nation that dares ship fuel to the island, a warning reportedly directed at Mexico among others.

The result is a slow-motion energy strangulation layered on top of decades of crumbling Soviet-era infrastructure. Cuba's grid was already wheezing before the fuel tap was turned off; now it is on life support, which is a grim metaphor given what is happening in the country's hospitals.

Hospitals Running on Fumes

Cuban hospitals technically have generators. The problem is feeding them. NBC News, granted rare government access to film inside a Cuban hospital on 17 March, documented laboratories reduced from five operating days per week to just two. Nurses reported power outages two to three times daily, each lasting anywhere from one to eight hours.

For expectant mothers like Mauren Echevarría Peña, reportedly being treated at the Ramón González Coro maternity hospital in Havana, this is not an abstract policy discussion. It is the difference between a monitored delivery and a dangerous gamble in the dark. After the 21 March collapse, Cuban authorities managed to restore power to 72,000 customers in Havana, including five hospitals, but that is cold comfort when the next blackout feels like a certainty rather than a possibility.

Chikungunya Adds Insult to Injury

As if navigating pregnancy without reliable electricity were not enough, Cuba is also battling a significant chikungunya outbreak. The CDC issued a Level 2 travel notice, and the WHO identified Cuba as one of the hardest-hit nations, with over 51,000 cases recorded in 2025 and 46 deaths. The outbreak has continued into 2026. One expectant mother, Indira Martínez, contracted the mosquito-borne virus during her first trimester. With rubbish piling up across Havana because there is no fuel for dump trucks, conditions for mosquito breeding are only improving.

Beyond the 32,800 pregnant women, Cuban government figures also identify over 61,800 children under one year as being at particular risk from the cascading crises.

The Bigger Picture

The Cuban government frames the situation squarely as a consequence of the US "energy blockade." Independent analysts offer a more nuanced reading: decades of underinvestment in infrastructure have met an acute fuel cutoff, and the combination is devastating. Mexico has reportedly sent humanitarian aid, though the precise details of those shipments remain difficult to independently verify.

What is beyond dispute is that tens of thousands of women face childbirth in a country where a 29-hour blackout, like the one following the 16 March collapse, is no longer shocking. It is just Tuesday. Or possibly Wednesday. Hard to tell when the clocks have stopped.

These women did not choose any of this. They simply chose to have children. The least the world can do is keep watching.

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