A baby's arrival is normally a joyous occasion. But the process of giving birth is a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of women around the world who die during childbirth or up to seven weeks thereafter.
Until recently, experts were frustrated by the difficulty of reducing the global maternal mortality rate, thought to be between 500,000 and 600,000 annually despite long efforts to reduce the numbers. But a newly published study in the British medical journal The Lancet reveals that the total death rate from 181 countries is closer to 350,000 a year — still unacceptably high but better.
The mortality rate went down largely because of economic growth and a higher rate of education for females, especially in poorer countries. The more educated and better off a woman is, the less likely she is to have multiple pregnancies that can threaten her health. For example, India and China, two countries whose economies have soared in recent years, lowered their mortality rates substantially since 1990.
The research also revealed that the maternal death rate in the United States is worse than once thought, higher than 40 other countries. One reason for the rise is better data, with changes in U.S. death certificates that more precisely identify pregnancy-related deaths. But rising rates of obesity in the United States and a large number of Caesarean sections, which make up as many as one-third of all deliveries here, increase the likelihood of medical complications.
Health Top Tips Nutrition Love Lifestyle Happiness Weight LossEven more disturbing are the stark differences in risk faced by American women of different nationalities. African American women are more than three times as likely as white women or Hispanic women to die in childbirth here. African American women suffer a death rate of 34.8 per 100,000 births in contrast to a death rate of 9.1 for white women and 10.2 for Hispanic women, according to the National Vital Statistics Report of April 2009. Some of the differences are blamed on poverty and lack of access to health care. It is true that around 13 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 have no health insurance, and just over half of those women are racial minorities.
But whatever the reason, the death rates during childbirth here are intolerable. One positive development is that health care reform should improve the odds of women not only safely delivering their babies, but surviving to raise them, too. In the dawn of the 21st century, it doesn't seem like too much to ask.