by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

Did you know women are more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth in the United States than in almost every other developed country"
A new bill introduced to Congress this week by a bipartisan group of legislators aims to tackle that problem. If approved, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act of 2017 would provide federal support, including as much as $35 million over 5 years, to help states develop committees that gather information on maternal deaths and recommend local solutions to prevent such tragedies.
The United States ranks 50th globally in maternal mortality. About 25 women die for every 100,000 live births in the U.S., compared to just 7 in Canada and 6 in Japan, according to the University of Washington?s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Even more alarming is that maternal deaths have increased sharply in the United States over the past 15 years, while these deaths have declined in most other parts of the world.
iStock

African-American women are particularly hard hit by this phenomenon. They are 3 to 4 times more likely to die of pregnancy complications than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Certain states also have much higher maternal death rates than others. In Texas, for example, 36 women die per 100,000 live births, compared to 15 in California, the New York Times reports.
Recent studies suggest almost half of maternal deaths in the U.S. are lik...