by WILLIAM FISHER
NEW YORK, Mar 18, 2010 (IPS) – Despite the fact that the United States spends more on maternal health than any other country in the world, deaths in childbirth among U.S. women are on the rise and already surpass the morbidity rates in most developed countries.
That’s the principal conclusion reached in a new study by Amnesty International and data from the Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the U.N.’s World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Amnesty study, entitled “Deadly Delivery”, reports that deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years – from 6.6 per 100,000 live births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006.
That would mean that, of the four million women who give birth each year, two to three women die each day in the U.S. from complications related to pregnancy.
While better reporting may account for some of the increase, the study speculates that it’s more likely that the figures may actually understate the problem because there are no federal requirements to report maternal deaths.
Other findings from the study:
U.S. women are now at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes than women in 40 other countries – five times greater than Greek women, for example, and four times greater than German women.
And another 1.7 million U.S. women – a third of all women who become pregnant in the United States – experience some kind of pregnancy-related complication that adversely affects their health. Severe pregnancy-related complications (known as “near misses” because the woman comes close to death) have increased 25 percent since 1998, the study reports.
Inter Press Service for more