Alwaght- The US maternal mortality in 2020 revealed that Black women are three times more likely to die than white women.
Overall, 861 women were identified as having died of maternal causes, which the World Health Organization defines as a death while pregnant or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by pregnancy or its management.
In 2019, the number of deaths per 100,000 live US births was 20.1, while in 2018 it was 17.4.
The racial breakdown of the 2020 figures reveal widening disparities.
The number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births was 55.3 among Black women, compared to 19.1 among white women, which would by itself still be higher than peer countries.
Here too, there are thought to be many factors, and experts say it's not as simple as race being a surrogate for socioeconomic conditions such as access to care and environmental stressors, though these undoubtedly play a role.
In fact, a 2016 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed for a Black woman with a college education, the likelihood of maternal death is still 60 percent greater than for a white woman with less than a high school education.
"Black women are time and time again shown to not receive the same level of treatment or medications," Ebony Hilton, an anesthesiologist at the University of Virginia - Charlottesville, and an expert in disparities in health care, told AFP.
