AmnestyInternational: In the U.S., Too Many Women Dying While Having Babies

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Time

AmnestyInternational: In the U.S., Too Many Women Dying While Having Babies
By JENNIFER BLOCK Jennifer Block – 1 hr 34 mins ago

Amnesty International may be best known to American audiences for bringing to light horror stories overseas such as the disappearance of political activists in Argentina or the abysmal conditions inside South African prisons under apartheid. But in a new report on pregnancy and childbirth care in the U.S., Amnesty details the maternal health care crisis in this country as part of a systemic violation of women's rights.

The report, titled "Deadly Delivery," notes that the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the U.S. is five times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain. Every day in the U.S., more than two women die of pregnancy-related causes, with the maternal mortality ratio doubling from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006. (And as shocking as these figures are, Amnesty notes that the actual number of maternal deaths in the U.S. may be a lot higher since there are no federal requirements to report these outcomes and since data collection at the state and local levels needs to be improved.) "In the U.S., we spend more than any country on health care, yet American women are at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes than in 40 other countries," says Nan Strauss, the report's co-author, who spent two years investigating the issue of maternal mortality worldwide. "We thought that was scandalous." (See the most common hospital mishaps.)

According to Amnesty, which gathered data from many sources including the CDC, approximately half of the pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, the result of systemic failures including barriers to accessing care; inadequate, neglectful, or discriminatory care; and overuse of risky interventions like inducing labor and delivering via cesarean section. "Women are not dying from complex, mysterious causes that we don't know how to treat," says Strauss. "Women are dying because it's a fragmented system, and they are not getting the comprehensive services that they need.

The report notes that black women in the U.S. are nearly four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, although they are no more likely to suffer certain complications like hemorrhage.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100312/hl_time/08599197163300

[rfranklin]

1. Stop saying that! We have the best medical system in the world!

We're number one! We're better than everyone else!

[pattmarty]

4. I wish ALL the morons that watch Beck, Hannity et al would do just..............

.............a little research/reading to see exactly how we REALLY stack up against the rest of the world in EVERYTHING. But, then again they wouldn't believe it anyway probably just blame it on the "liberal media".

[tom_paine]

9. ROFL. RW Authoritarian Followers aren't very big on doing their own research.

Ever talk to one of these "attack parrots"?

What they ARE big on is believing everything THE PARTY tells them and then parroting t

Thinking for themselves is too much effort and not as much fun as American Idol.

Thus has it always been, thus shall it ever be.

That is why we are hurtling towards the New Dark Ages, because the Old Dark Ages were a RW Authoritarian Leader's Dream - except this time they are hoping to preserve DVDs and antibiotics.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[fasttense]

2. The dirty little secret of anti-choice supporters is that your risk of dying from

caring a fetus to full term are getting worse and they don't want you to know it.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. The key is in that last paragraph...

a lot of our less noteworthy statistics could be explained by the fact that we have the largest pool of poor people in the industrialized world. You don't find ghettos in Greece or Germany. You find them here. Appalachia is here, not in France or Canada.

Racism? Yeah that has a lot to do with it, but poverty cuts across the board, and as many wars on poverty as we have had, we don't seem to be really that interested in reducing its effects.

[No Elephants]

5. Between health care and choice, politicians get to decide whether many pregnant women live or die.

And we let them.

[Steerpike]

6. there is no excuse for this

No excuse at all...

[sinkingfeeling]

7. ABC Nightly News ran this story, citing California increases, a couple of nights last week.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=10048079

[Vidar]

8. Just another facet of our political ambition to become a third world nation.