A recently published analysis showed that one-third of the counties in the United States do not have access to maternity care deserts.
As reported in ScienceAlert, maternity health care in the US is in a "dire place," as outlined by a string of recent reports and studies.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that over four out of five women dying from pregnancy or shortly after that could have been saved with proper health care, based on data gathered from 2017 to 2019.
In early 2022, the CDC reported that Black people are thrice more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White people, with variations in the quality of healthcare they are given, implicit bias, structural racism, and underlying chronic diseases contributing to the stark disparities.
Surprising Reason for Maternity Death
Two epidemiologists from Harvard University TH Chan School of Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston are emphasizing an even larger cause of maternal death in the US, which is surprisingly overlooked.
In a recent BMJ editorial, Rebecca Lawn and Karestan Koenen pointed out that pregnant people and new mothers are more likely to die than they are t die of pregnancy-related complications like hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders, or sepsis, the three leading causes of pregnancy deaths.
Such findings were first published in 2021 in Obstetrics & Gynecology, although given the recent media attention regarding US maternal health system, Koenen and Lawn believe the statistics are worth emphasizing again.
This year, another group of researchers discovered that most pregnancy-related homicides, those that took place during pregnancy or within a year of birth, were associated with intimate partner violence and firearms.
Pregnancy-Related Homicides
In the US, between 2008 and 2019m firearms were used in 68 percent of homicides related to pregnancy, the nationwide data analysis revealed.
Preventing violence of men towards women, which includes gun violence, could save the lives of countless women and their unborn children in the US each year.
Essentially, violence against women is a worldwide problem, although, in the US, the availability of firearms seems to have made the problem much worse. Lawn and Koenen call the issue a health emergency for pregnant women.
Two epidemiologists contended that more restrictions on firearms and better firearm regulations are desperately needed to shield those who are pregnant.
Crucial to Preventing Homicide During Pregnancy
As specified in a similar Qudach report, research to determine risk factors for homicide during pregnancy is crucial to prevention.
Nonetheless, better quality data are needed for more expensive analyses. Recent research has been limited by large amounts of missing data on women's pregnancy status and those who have been killed.
Detail on the links and patterns of abuse resulting in homicide during pregnancy, as well as in the postpartum period, is minimal, as well, in large datasets.
As growing evidence reveals, pregnancy-linked homicide is one of the country's most preventable causes of maternal death. Now is the best time to take it quite seriously.
Related information about the surprising effects of pregnancy is shown on TED-Ed's YouTube video below:
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Check out more news and information on Pregnancy in Science Times.
