U.S. maternal death rate higher than Europe's: report

[donsu]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1339620220071013


The United States has a sharply higher rate of women dying during or just after pregnancy than European countries, even some relatively poor countries such as Macedonia and Bosnia, according to the first estimates in five years on maternal deaths worldwide.

-snip-

The United States has a far higher death rate than the European average, the report shows, with one in 4,800 U.S. women dying from complications of pregnancy or childbirth, the same as Belarus and just slightly better than Serbia's rate of one in 4,500.

-snip-

"Among the ten top-ranked European and other industrialized countries, where women are guaranteed good-quality health and family planning services that minimize their lifetime risk, fewer than one in 16,400 will die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth," the United Nations, which issued the report along with the World Bank, said in a statement.

"At the other end of the scale are ten countries where high fertility and shattered health care systems raise women's lifetime risk so that more than one in every 15 women will die of pregnancy-related causes," it said.

The report, published in the Lancet medical journal, places the United States 41st among 171 countries.

-snip-

The major direct causes of U.S. pregnancy-related deaths are blood clots, hemorrhage, complications of medical conditions, and eclampsia and pre-eclampsia, which are marked by dangerously high blood pressure.

The death rate among U.S. black women was nearly four times the rate found among non-Hispanic white women -- 34.7 deaths per 100,000 live births for blacks versus 9.3 per 100,000 live births for whites, the report said.
--------------------------


the war against women never ends

and they say they love us

[NoodleBoy]

1. universal health care and better health education would probably make that number plummet

here's for a Dem win in 08.

[Katherine Brengle]

2. We need every person in this country to have access to health care

for free. There is no excuse for the most powerful country in the world to treat its citizens like we do.

Massachusetts has free health care for pregnant women, new moms, and children. This is the least every state should be doing.