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Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

cdc.gov

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Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#151
post #2

Maternity healthcare in the US is one of the worst in the developed nations. And yet we're banning abortion, and doing nothing to fix it. Even WIC has came under attack in the past. Protecting the unborn is very convenient. They make no demands of you. Edit: WIC: Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic

I completely agree with you, except I think the middle line of your comment is needlessly snide. One could equally say: "Protecting unborn (and newly born) humans is very inconvenient. They make all sorts of demands of you. (So maybe we should deny their humanity.)" The real questions are "At what point does human life begin / become valuable?" and "Should governments provide for their citizens or merely punish those…

> Should governments provide for their citizens or merely punish those who harm them?

There is no argument about when a fetus becomes an citizen. Having the government protect its citizens from harm is a radically prochoice stance.

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#152
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by a country mile. For reference (so someone doesn't have to click through): 17.4 per 100,000 vs the two closest: France at 8.7 and Canada at 8.6 Does that account for the far higher proportion of people living in rural areas in the US? What about obesity, ethnicity, etc?

The USA has about 20-30% of the population that's structurally poor, an artifact of slavery and oppression, but also the wider variety of governmental structures, economic concentrations, and cultures in different states and regions. This shows up in incomes, health statistics, crime, life expectancy, educational outcomes, etc. Probably the most drastic is the difference between coastal California (the richest region…

The reason I brought up rural specifically is because a lot of people in the US live hours away from the nearest hospital - of course unpredictable things like childbirth will not go as well if you don't have access to a hospital.

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#153

Reminder when comparing with other nations that as this study states: "Pregnancy-related deaths occurred during pregnancy, delivery, and up to a year postpartum. " The measure can be very different elsewhere. The WHO defines a maternal death as "the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy , irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or a…

Also, mental health conditions and cardiomyopathy are "preventable"? Their definition of Preventability stretches credibility- lowering the risk is different from preventing something. "A death is considered preventable if the committee determines that there was at least some chance of the death being averted by one or more reasonable changes to patient, community, provider, facility, and/or systems factors."

> 2 Mental health conditions include deaths of suicide, overdose/poisoning related to substance use disorder, and other deaths determined by the MMRC to be related to a mental health condition, including substance use disorder.

Deaths by suicide and drug abuse are indeed preventable. Are you misconstruing the word preventable to mean 100% preventable?

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, mental health conditions and cardiomyopathy are "preventable"? Their definition of Preventability stretches credibility- lowering the risk is different from preventing something. "A death is considered preventable if the committee determines that there was at least some chance of the death being averted by one or more reasonable changes to patient, community, provider, facility, and/or systems factors."

If "some chance" is taken to an extreme, I think there's potential to cloud the data so much it becomes almost useless. Do they consider treatments that couldn't possibly be performed on every pregnancy that it might help? (due to finite medical resources, cost that insurance companies won't pay, etc.) I'd much rather see a focus on the basics that other countries do that are consistently missed. Especially when it c…

If “some chance” is taken to the extreme, I would think all pregnancies are preventable, and with it all pregnancy-related deaths.

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#155
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a reminder that at least a few years ago, the US had the highest maternal mortality rate in the entire OECD against a standardized metric. Like, by a country mile. [1] > Among 11 developed countries, the United States has the highest maternal mortality rate, a relative undersupply of maternity care providers, and is the only country not to guarantee access to provider home visits or paid parental leave in the po…

> by a country mile. For reference (so someone doesn't have to click through): 17.4 per 100,000 vs the two closest: France at 8.7 and Canada at 8.6 Does that account for the far higher proportion of people living in rural areas in the US? What about obesity, ethnicity, etc?

> Does that account for the far higher proportion of people living in rural areas in the US?

The rate seems about the same as France and Canada?

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS?contextu...

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can prevent some mental health conditions by caring properly for the mother, for example a mother struggling to pay rent or unable to access necessary medical care is naturally going to be at higher risk of conditions like depression and if you improve her circumstances it's possible that the depression might at least abate for a while. Lots of people who are managing mental health conditions will spiral if their…

> You can prevent some mental health conditions by caring properly for the mother, By that definition, cancer is preventable. Actually, nearly every possible cause of death is preventable if you're definition is "doing something might reduce risk factors". That's not the normal usage of "preventable death".

I'm surprised you would consider all cancer deaths not preventable. You wouldn't consider a smoker's lung cancer death preventable death?

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can prevent some mental health conditions by caring properly for the mother, By that definition, cancer is preventable. Actually, nearly every possible cause of death is preventable if you're definition is "doing something might reduce risk factors". That's not the normal usage of "preventable death".

I'm surprised you would consider all cancer deaths not preventable. You wouldn't consider a smoker's lung cancer death preventable death?

Between some and many are. Not all- just like not all cancers are from smoking.

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then suddenly the entire globe started to test everybody with a pulse for Covid, This is one of the big reasons that I total distrust and reject the provided mortality statistics with Covid. Statistical comparisons have to be made in similar ways or they're worthless.

All cause mortality / total excess death statistics solve most of these issues and was remarkably higher during Covid... https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/dataviz8737/viz/COVID...

I don't think Covid killed literally 0 people. But there's more than 1 reasonable explanation for at least some of these excess deaths, including looking at the Covid countermeasures themselves. Suicides and other deaths of despair? People who couldn't get their required cancer and other treatments? What about the attempted medical treatments for Covid? We're not going to agree on this, I imagine, but there's a lot more to be looked at.

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#159

The rate of maternal deaths in the US far outpaces that for other industrial countries. [0] Likely related to a racial divide in healthcare infrastructure? [0] https://tcf.org/content/commentary/worsening-u-s-maternal-he...

The racial disparities cut across class. The most famous example being the complications that Serena Williams experienced during delivery https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/1/11/16879984/serena-wil.... The impact of lives lost and diminished by racialized access to and administration of health care is immense https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/maternal-mortality...

Besides looking at other industrialized countries, it also insightful to look at the health outcomes of the us against other Caribbean and African states, particularly in the places where most of the Black women in the us live. In 2019, the reported maternal mortality rate (MMR) for Black women in the US state of Georgia was 66 / 100,000.

Barbados MMR of 12.6 / 100,000. Bahamas, MMR of 22.4 / 100,000. Zimbabwe, MMR of 53.9 / 100,000. Botswana, MMR of 45.9 / 100,000 (the MMR of white women in Georgia) Jamaica, MMR of 13.7 / 100,000. Cuba, MMR of 5.1 / 100,000

https://data.unicef.org/country

Re: Pregnancy-Related Deaths: Data from Maternal Mortality Review Committees

#160
post #124
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is a lie. Both in terms of late stage abortion being "business as usual" in USA and in terms of late stage abortion not being done in Europe. Laws vary between countries, but basically Poland is not Europe. Generally you can get late stage abortion for variety for health issues (abd even social ones). Also, you won't be denied prescribed medicine you need for pregnancy unrelated condition just because yo…

>Generally you can get late stage abortion for variety for health issues Isn't this true in even the most extremely anti abortion states of the US?

Indiana just outlawed all abortion after 20 weeks post-fertilization, even if it would kill the mother.
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