The maternal mortality rate rose in 2021 in the United States, according to a report released Thursday, which also shows that black women are twice as likely to die of pregnancy as white women in the country.
A sad record that dates back to the mid-1960s. Some 1,205 women died from a cause related or aggravated by their pregnancy or their care in the United States in 2021, the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, indicates a report from the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released Thursday.
The maternal mortality rate therefore rose to 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births in this second year marked by Covid-19.
More risk of death for black women
But the report also points to inequalities between women. In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for black women stood at 69.9 deaths per 100,000 births, or 2.6 times the rate for white women, which was 26.6 deaths for the same number of births, indicates the NCHS.
In 2020, 861 women died in these conditions, compared to 754 in 2019. Figures have increased worryingly over the years, while the rate of these deaths in the United States is the highest among industrialized countries.
Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as death occurring during pregnancy or within 42 days of a cause related to or aggravated by her pregnancy or her treatment. Medical advances have reduced their number over the decades.
The NCHS report, based on data, does not explain the reasons for the increase in maternal deaths in the United States in 2021, nor the disparity between black and white women.
“Maternal Mortality Crisis”
“Those of us who work in maternity care have known for a long time that this is a problem in our country,” he told CNN Dr. Elizabeth Langen, specialist in high-risk maternal-fetal medicine in the United States.
And experts have already indicated that the Covid-19 pandemic has been a significant factor in the increase in these deaths of women who are pregnant or soon after their pregnancy, such as socio-economic conditions and lack of access to quality care. for many black women in the country.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dramatic and tragic effect on maternal mortality rates, but we cannot let this obscure the fact that there was already – and still is – a crisis of maternal mortality,” said Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Eliminating “racial inequities in health” must be a top public health priority, she said in a statement, when black women account for “a disproportionate number” of these deaths “at rates growing and alarming”, a trend that must be “stopped”.
