Maternal Mortality

The infant mortality rate over the past two decades has dropped significantly due to advances in technology and a deeper understand of prenatal and postnatal diseases and conditions like sudden infant death syndrome. However, maternal mortality has not declined at all over the same period. In a major study recently conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), results indicated no change over the past two decades, “The number of women who die from pregnancy or childbirth has remained the same since 1982, despite advances that could prevent half of maternal deaths. Data from death certificates indicated seven to eight women died for every 100,000 live births between 1982 and 1996. No progress has been made since 1982 in reducing the number of maternal deaths” (Cooper 1).

The study by the CDC defined maternal deaths as those deaths that occurred “during a pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of a pregnancy and for which the cause of death was listed as a complication of pregnancy, childbirth, or the puerperium” (Maternal 1). The Federal Government set the national goal of maternal mortality at 3.3 per 100,000 in a policy program known as the Healthy People 2000 initiative. However, the national rate of 7.7 per 100,000 currently is more than twice that goal. Yet, despite this high average and no reduction in two decades there have also been no reductions in the rate of maternal mortal

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o much higher than the national average for black women. Officials say the large number of immigrants who come to Florida are non-white and many like Caribbean and Haitian women are overrepresented in the statistics. They say this is largely due to their inexperience with American health care systems, an older age of childbirth and lack of access in general to proper health care, “…possibly because of the difficult in understanding the American health-care system and because they tend to have more children and at older ages. The American health-care system is extraordinarily complex to navigate if you’re from another culture. Poverty also plays a significant role. Women may not have transportation to get to prenatal care” (Bietsch 1). Yet, the CDC study puts to lie the explanation that socioeconomic causes are the sole cause of the high rates of black maternal mortality. The CDC report does verify that black women are less likely to received adequate prenatal care in comparison to white women, but one might think if immigrant status or lower socioeconomic status were the primary factors that Hispanic women might suffer from similar high rates of maternal mortality. However, the CDC statistics illustrate that this is not t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1592
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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