Pregnancy-related deaths are on the rise in the U.S., and those facing the greatest risk are black women, Native Americans, and Alaska natives, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Roughly 700 women are dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth each year, and about three out of five of those deaths could have been prevented, researchers found. About a third of the deaths occur during pregnancy, a third occur during or within a week of birth, and a third occur up to a year after delivery. Major causes of death include heart disease, stroke, infections, and severe bleeding.
In a May 8, 2019 Fox News report, obstetrician Neel Shah, research assistant in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Ariadne Labs, said that C-section rates in the U.S. have gone up 500% from the last generation until now. Sometimes C-sections save lives, he said, “but when people get hurt in health care, they can get hurt in two ways—when we do too little too late and also when we do too much too soon. And C-sections have become a too-much-too-soon problem.”
Watch the Fox News report: Reports: Pregnancy-related deaths on the rise in the US
Read an Associated Press article: US pregnancy deaths are up, especially among minorities