Maternal mortality: An American crisis

Maternal mortality: An American crisis
Image by Sanjasy from Pixabay

“If you have a C-section in 2018, you have a 90 percent chance of having a C-section the second time. But the second time it’s a more complicated surgery. And the third time, it can be like operating on a melted box of crayons. And in those cases, women can bleed to death.”

Dr. Neel Shah, professor of obstetrics, Harvard Medical School, told CBS News Correspondent Erin Moriarity that he believes “probably more than half ” of all C-sections” aren’t even necessary.

Moriority interviewed Charles Johnson, whose 39-year-old wife Kira died after the birth of their second child & her second C-section. He says although he noticed blood in his wife’s catheter not long after the birth late that afternoon, and a doctor did order a CT scan, no scan was performed by 7, 8 or even 10:00 p.m. that evening . Just after midnight Kira was rushed into surgery. By then her abdomen was filled with 3 1/2 liters of blood and her heart stopped beating.

Dr. Mary Ann Etiebet, Executive Director of Merck for Mothers, created by Merck Pharmaceuticals to reduce maternal deaths globally, is quoted as saying:

“The United States is the only industrialized country where the rates of maternal deaths have increased, not decreased. And so, young women actually have a higher risk of dying during pregnancy and childbirth than their mothers did.”

Consider this troubling statistic pointed out by Dr. Etiebet:

“Sixty percent of the deaths in the United States are preventable.”

CBS News, 8/5/18

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