Ajit Karn
According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States experienced one of the highest rates of maternal deaths in its history in 2021. According to the report, black women experience more than twice the number of maternal fatalities as white women.
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) estimates that 1,205 women will perish in the United States during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth in 2021, up from 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019.
The United States has the greatest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries, and the number of fatalities in 2021 was the highest since the mid-1960s.
“The world’s most powerful nation should not accept this as a reality.” The press secretary of the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, referred to the current situation as a crisis.
The NCHS reported that there were 32.9 fatalities per 100,000 live births in 2021, up from 23.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2020 and 20.1 deaths per 100,000 in 2019.
In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for black women was 69.9 per 100,000 live births, which was 2.6 times higher than the rate for white women, which was 26.6 per 100,000.
Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, stated, “The Covid-19 pandemic had a dramatic and tragic effect on maternal death rates, but we cannot let that obscure the fact that there was and is a maternal mortality crisis.”
Hoskins stated in a statement that eliminating “racial health disparities” must be a top public health priority.
“Black pregnant and postpartum women continue to account for a disproportionate share of maternal deaths at alarmingly high rates,” said Hoskins in a statement. This pattern must be reversed.
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The World Health Organization defines a maternal death as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, regardless of the duration and location of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, excluding accidental or incidental causes.”
In spite of maternal mortality rates decreasing by a third over the past two decades, the United Nations recently reported that a woman dies every two minutes due to complications during pregnancy or labour.
