COVID Pushes Maternal Mortality Up
Yesterday on The PediaBlog , Dr. Brian Donnelly informed us that the all-cause mortality rate in American children and teenagers has been increasing in the last few years. Fatal injuries suffered in car accidents, after drug overdoses, and from firearm-related suicides and homicides were cited as the main reasons for the increase. Unfortunately, the bad news doesn’t stop there. In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study showing that the country’s maternal mortality rate — already higher than most developed nations in the world, as the graph above indicates — rose significantly in 2021 compared to years past: In 2021, 1,205 women died of maternal causes in the United States compared with 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019. The maternal mortality rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019. Black women had a maternal mortality rate 2.6 times higher than White women in 20...