Whenever I read about "maternal mortality rates," I wince. How about the truth for a change? Mother death rate per newborns? Percentage of moms dead at birth of new babies? Number of orphans created at birth?
Here in America, 17 pregnant women die for every 100,000 births. In Australia and Sweden, by contrast, there are only five maternal deaths for every 100,000 births. The figure is six in Ireland, seven in Germany and Canada, and eight in Norway, according to a recent study in the medical journal The Lancet.
To be competitive about life-saving, in Slovakia the rate is six maternal deaths per 100,000 childbirths. Slovakia spends $565.00 per capita on health care; Americans spend over $6,000.00 per person on health, as reported in "The Value of Nothing" by Raj Patel.
For minority populations, Patel reports, the numbers are getting worse, not better. "If the African American population rate in the United States were a separate country, [it] would be ranked below Uzbekistan, which has a maternal mortality rate of 24 per 100,000, and where the average income per person is $840.00 per year."
But there is some good news to celebrate. "The number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased by 34 percent from an estimated 546,000 in 1990 to 358,000 in 2008," according the World Health Organization. Not good enough, but let's be happy for the 188,000 female lives saved.
"Every day, about 1000 women died due to these complications in 2008. Out of the 1,000, 570 lived in sub-Saharan Africa, 300 in South Asia and five in high-income countries. The risk of a woman in a developing country dying from a pregnancy-related cause during her lifetime is about 36 times higher compared to a woman living in a developed country," the report adds.
In the United Kingdom (with its single payer, universal, socialized health care system), the rate is eight women per 100,000 births. Some politicians believe that America has the best health care system in the world. Is that true?
As Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn point out in "Half the Sky," "the issue is almost never covered [in the media]" even though the maternal death rate equals about two jumbo jets crashing each day, all passengers and crew killed. Because the numbers are reported to him with greater frequency and immediacy, in my opinion Speaker Boehner would probably know more about his own golf score than the health score of his Ohio constituents.
I wonder if the Speaker has ever played at one of Italy's centuries-old golf courses. If so, he might learn that Italy is the safest place in the world to give birth. Only one woman in 100,000 dies in childbirth. For pregnant women, Italy -- a single-payer, nationalized, universal health care system -- is indeed "la dolce vita."
There is an ever increasing population of American women who are taking birth back into their own hands because they either have had a bad OB/GYN -hospital birth or are becoming more aware of what really turns a normal pregnancy & birth into an "extremely dangerous & risky" birth.
An amazing thing happens when medical interference is removed from the equation. Parents become far more aware & educated in what is normal & much less likely to be sucked into a highly profitable hospital birth. In fact the movement back to homebirth is becoming so strong that there are constant legal battles against midwives & homebirth by the medical profession who is threatened by it. Funny thing though-the legal profession ALWAYS manages to continue making bank off the birth industry, on either side of the delivery table. As does the insurance industry.
It certainly opens up several trains of thought as to why black women ARE more likely to die, as opposed to an other "minority" in the US. Is it monetary? Is it ignorance? Is it abuse of the medicaid system "providers" who only do so much according to the pay scale? If it's just monetary-then most people on substandard insurance or without insurance are all going to be affected by the level of care dictated by that.
WAY more information needs to be told about this -the article really did nothing but state data.
And WAY more people who are having babies-need to educate themselves to prevent BAD MEDICINE.
You can't fix stupidity.
I'd also like to see a break-down of how many of these dead mothers got any sort of prenatal care, and why those that didn't--didn't.
We should be ashamed of these kinds of numbers.
Yes and No.
Yes, the USA has some of the best technology and brain trusts to lead that innovative thinking.
No, the delivery of that amazing technology to the US public is pathetic at best.
And I understand why Politicians think they have great HC, they have HC Insurance provided by the US government for life!
So therefore, why not extend the Single-Payer Health Care, tax supported Insurance that seems to work for the US Gov., Military, Elderly and Poor and let the rest of the people have some?
Our county has a free maternity clinic. The doctors were tired of having to take care of women in delivery who had no prenatal care and therefore causing harm to mother and child. So they started a clinic and staffed it themselves by volunteering. The result. A few women showed up. Their reason for not going?
"I couldn't get a ride". So the OB docs teamed up and bought a van to pick them up. A few more showed up. "I didn't like the time the van came by". So don't blame the "Greedy docs" who paid for this out of their own pockets- blame the person responsible- the patients.
Almost all pregnant women qualify for Medicaid- a single payer, yet it is still a disaster- and you want everyone on it ?
Too many Csections ? Thank the lawyers. 90% of OB docs practicing more than ten years have been sued. Are 90% of them bad? Nope. But rather than wait and see, they will now do a csection at the first sign of fetal distress to prevent some lawyer in court saying they didn't act
"Hospitals are conceiving new programs to make childbirth safer, amid mounting evidence that overuse of labor-inducing drugs for preterm deliveries and other common practices in the delivery room are endangering both mothers and infants.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06193/705248-114.stm#ixzz1CXOdcE2F
More about this practice..
" Pit to Distress"
Friday July 10, 2009
There is a lot of talk going on about a phenomena called "Pit to Distress." Basically this means that an obstetrician or midwife orders pitocin to be given, typically during an induction, at a rate or in such a way that it is likely to cause the baby to go into fetal distress and require a cesarean.........http://pregnancy.about.com/b/2009/07/10/pit-to-distress.htm
The doctor not the lawyer done it
Mothers get gynecology if they are neglected in labor. Preterm babies (15% in US) develop many chronic diseases over the rest of their lifetimes. Even paying for a C-section for 60-70% of women (cf China and Brazil) would be cost-effective. It is not clear if it would save lives.
No, it's not true. We have doctors in this country that are profit driven and they grouse about taking medicare patients. I know lots of them do and the majority doesn't make a big deal out of it, but there are lots that would prefer not to touch poor people.
Doctors come from all around the world to practice in the USA because really, it's the last vestige of capitalism where they can still charge exhorbitant fees and get away with it. For some reason we find that acceptable because half of the population believes doctors will close up shop if the US goes universal health care. Where the heck else are they going to go since the rest of the world pretty much has universal too? Until we get universal or single payer, they will continue to gouge us and they won't apologize for it. They think they are entitled just as the GOP think they're entitled to taxpayer money and use it like it's their own personal ATM.
Universal health care systems negotiate for lower and more reasonable drug costs around the world. The USA is the only place they can charge breath-takingly inflated prices for drugs made right here. They gouge Americans to the tune of hundreds of times more for drugs than other countries pay. I live in Canada and I pay 1/6th of the cost my sister pays for the same medication in Florida. That's not the best example because it only reflects 6 times the cost when for most drugs they market them up 500% or more.
What is government for if not to work FOR the people. This is how government is viewed and how it works in all other western countries. Their governments make sure their people are looked after, health care cradle to grave and their people are healthy and which makes their country's healthy.
In the USA states remove people, 240 thousand last week in AZ from medicare. They refused to pay for people's transplants and say it's optional. If their life was on the line I bet it wouldn't be optional.
The right screams death panels but the only REAL death panels we've seen are Republican death panels cutting our people's health care off and instead like Jan Brewer asking for money for more tax cuts for the wealthy. Why do the wealthy matter more than the rest of us?
I completely agree with you. I always thought that government was supposed to work for the people but then we look at the USA and Africa and see that it doesn't always work that way. The only thing that bothers me about living in Canada is the conservative government that appears to want to tear that health care down as much as possible. But the conservatives here are Conservative Lite, compared to the US conservatives. Although Harper and his gang of right wing corporatists make me think of the US and that's frightening. I see them little by little attacking and trying to dismantle health care. Canadians will never let it happen. I tell my American family, you want make a Canadian mad, try taking away their health care. Hahahaha. Great country and I love it. Wonderful, wonderful people. From the bottom of my heart, this country is home for me now forever. I go home all the time and I love it but this country is just so laid back, tolerant, inclusive.
Republicans do not know how to run the US. They run it into the ground every time they get in. They couldn't run a lemonade stand without bankrupting it.
Real health care reform could have changed all that but our politicians (of BOTH parties) care more about appeasing health insurance companies.