U.S. pregnancy deaths show outsized toll on Black women in pandemic’s first year, report shows
February 23, 2022; 7:35 PM EST
(Reuters) – Black women in the United States were nearly three times as likely to die during or shortly after pregnancy over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic than white women, according to a government report published on Wednesday.
Overall, as the pandemic took hold, the number of maternal deaths rose 14% to 861 in 2020 from 754 in 2019, according to the report from the National Center for Health Statistics.
The maternal death rate in 2020 among Black women was 2.9 times that of white women, up from 2.5 times in 2018 and 2019, the data showed.
About one-third of the pregnant women and new mothers who died in 2020 were Black, even though Black Americans make up just over 13% of the U.S. population, the report showed.
View of the entrance to the Emergency room of Memorial Hospital Marysville in Marysville, Ohio, U.S., January 29, 2022. REUTERS/Gaelen Morse
Age also proved to be a significant risk factor. The mortality rate in women aged 40 and above was nearly eight times that of women younger than 25, according to the data.
Reuters source:
