Economic Crisis Boost to Health of Cubans

Cuba's economic crisis in the 1990s inadvertently boosted people's health by obliging them to eat less and exercise more, according to research.

As a result deaths from heart disease and diabetes plunged, giving a silver lining to what was otherwise a miserable era.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its subsidies to the island ushered in a decade of severe food and fuel shortages that compelled people to slash their calorie intake and to travel on foot or bicycle.

As waistlines contracted along with the economy there was a steep fall in deaths linked to being overweight, according to a study published last week in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Between 1997 and 2002 deaths caused by diabetes declined by 51%, coronary heart disease mortality dropped 35% and stroke mortality by 20%.

The team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Loyola University, Chicago, and University Hospital, Cienfuegos, Cuba, said that what Cubans grimly refer to as the "special period" had been an opportunity for science.

"This is the first, and probably the only, natural experiment, born of unfortunate circumstances, where large effects on diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality have been related to sustained population-wide weight loss as a result of increased physical activity and reduced caloric intake," said Manuel Franco, of Johns Hopkins.

Obesity in the southern coastal city of Cienfuegos tumbled from 14.3% in 1991 to 7.2% in 1995. The recent economic recovery has reversed that trend. Around 30% of adult Cubans are now overweight and a quarter have a tendency toward obesity, according to a government study.