This analysis is extremely personal and one that lies close to my heart. ❤️🩹🤰🏻🤱🏻
I almost became one of the statistics in this analysis. After giving birth to healthy twins in 2015 I was bleeding internally and in excrutiating pain. The pain and overall unwell feeling I kept expressing was continually dismissed by nurses and doctors. It took over 4 hours of unbearable pain and my husband demanding I be examined before I was seen by a doctor. I will never forget the look on the doctor's face as he examined me and the dawning realization of how badly they had screwed up. I was rushed into emergency surgery and spent over 24 hours in the ICU recovering. I was one of the lucky ones but there are many, especially women of color, who are not so lucky. Even with all the advances in medicine, giving birth in the United States is still dangerous. While I feel there are many factors that contributed to this, a primary reason is medical staff's neglect for the mother's health after delivery. It is an all too common story where mother's feel like second class citizens after giving birth as all the attention moves to the health and well-being of the baby, often times at the expense of the mother's well-being. Their concerns are ignored or trivialized until it becomes an emergency.
According to the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality) women die as a result of complications during and following pregnancy and childbirth. Most of these complications develop during pregnancy and most are preventable or treatable. Other complications may exist before pregnancy but are worsened during pregnancy, especially if not managed as part of the woman’s care. The major complications that account for nearly 75% of all maternal deaths are (4):
-severe bleeding (mostly bleeding after childbirth)
-infections (usually after childbirth)
-high blood pressure during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia and eclampsia)
-complications from delivery
-unsafe abortion
While 94% of all maternal deaths occur in low and lower middle-income countries, the United States continues to have higher maternal deaths compared to other developed countries.
This analysis looks to examine
Data Collection
UNICEF Data Warehouse
https://data.unicef.org/dv_index/
United Nations Development Programme
Human Development Report (Human Development Index 1990-2022)
https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads
Current Health Expenditure Per Capita data
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD
References
Maternal Mortality Review Committee information-US
https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/maternal-mortality-review-committees?gclid=CjwKCAjwtKmaBhBMEiwAyINuwOVPX1hMKHfM1ojSHvI-8kJHuW84QtzASnIuUPawrVAixg3n1W71PxoCEdgQAvD_BwE
Health and Health Care for Women of Reproductive Age: How the United States Compares with Other High-Income Countries
commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2022/apr/health-and-health-care-women-reproductive-age
Maternal Health: Significant Strides but not Enough
https://www.unfpa.org/maternal-health#readmore-expand