Havana, December 27 (RHC)--Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel debated Monday with members of the Academy of Sciences on the challenges posed by aging and other population dynamics in the country.

Currently, the Caribbean island has the highest aging in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The President said this is an issue of systematicity, comprehensiveness, urgency, and priority.

The meeting also analyzed other challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its short, medium, and long-term consequences, especially in the elderly.

The head of state proposed to analyze the issue in a joint meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.

"Aging in Cuba is a conquest, a result of what the Revolution has done in all areas, starting with health, despite being a poor and blockaded country for more than 60 years," he added.

Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga affirmed that since 2020, Cuba began to age naturally, with more deaths than births.

On this dynamic, Doctor of Science Juan de Jesús Llibre recalled that Cuba faces unprecedented demographic aging.

The director of the Alzheimer Studies Center described this trend as a very advanced demographic transition that determines an epidemiological or health change, with its respective social, economic, and health impacts, among others.

For his part, Antonio Aja, expert of the Center for Demographic Studies of the University of Havana, mentioned among the factors of this phenomenon the birth rate, mortality and external migrations, and the increase in life expectancy.

The Cuban population is aging and decreasing, but the low level of population replacement has been a cumulative process since the 20-30s of the last century, he said.

He acknowledged that with the Revolution, mortality was drastically reduced, and life expectancy increased considerably.