Health department medical detectives find 84% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable
For several weeks a year, the work of nurse-midwife Karen Sheffield-Abdullah is really detective work. She and a team of other medical investigators with the North Carolina public health department scour the hospital records and coroner reports of new moms who died after giving birth.
These maternal mortality review committees look for clues to what contributed to the deaths — unfilled prescriptions, missed postnatal appointments, signs of trouble that doctors overlooked — to figure out how many of them could have been prevented and how.
The committees are at work in almost 40 states in the U.S. and in the latest and largest compilation of such data, released in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a staggering 84% of pregnancy-related deaths were deemed preventable.
Even more striking to nurse-detectives like Sheffield-Abdullah, is that 53% of the deaths occurred well after women left the hospital, between seven days and a year after delivery.
"We are so baby focused," she says. "Once the baby is here, it's almost like the mother is discarded. Like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. The mom is the wrapper, and the baby is the candy. Once you remove the wrapper, you just discard the wrapper. And what we really need to be thinking about is that fourth trimester, that time after the baby is born."
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/10/21/1129115162/maternal-mortality-childbirth-deaths-prevention
***** That last paragraph is so true. It’s wonderful to be focused on the baby, but new moms need care, too, plus government policies to back up needs of new moms like proper health care and parental leave. I can tell you that after having 3 kids in my 30s, back then you got sent home from the hospital with your baby usually after 24 hours … 2 days even after a Caesarean … Good Luck. I was barely able to stand up straight…. Dad went back to work and there you were left all alone with a little person who demanded you 24/7. No wonder post partum mental illness and addiction is on the rise. My two cents …
Rethugs who prohibit abortion or won’t expand Medicaid make me furious. I’m sick and tired of seeing women being treated like birthing vessels with no humanity.
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