A woman dies every 2 minutes during pregnancy or childbirth, report says

And now to a GMA Health Alert, a new report released overnight by the World Health Organization found maternal deaths have increased in nearly all regions of the world for the past five years, including in America. Our Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Jen Ashton, is back with the details. Doc, tell us about this study. Yeah, Michael, here it is. It's quite extensive. It's a report card on our maternal health statistics here in this country and all over the world.

Here in this country, we are failing. The highlights of this report, and again, we've been watching this now for at least the last 10 years, a global increase in women all over the world dying from pregnancy or childbirth. A death is occurring every two minutes for a pregnant woman worldwide. Ponder that for a moment. Economic and social inequities, obviously playing a major role here. And here in this country, the U.S.

pregnancy maternal mortality rate has increased 75 percent in the last 20 years. For a comparison, if you go across the Atlantic to Britain, a man whose wife is pregnant has a greater chance of dying than that pregnant woman. Here in this country, we are in almost a reverse situation, and women of color face a three to four-time higher risk of dying than a white woman. Which is surprising to hear, because not all countries had an increase. Some stayed level. Others even improved. So why is this so bad here in this country? You know, that's the question.

Are we collecting data differently? It's a complicated problem. But the highlights in terms of causes, according to this report, really are number one, that almost all maternal deaths in this country are preventable. The biggest problem is access to affordable and high-quality care for women in pregnancy and in the so-called fourth trimester. And we know that deaths increase when women have less access to quality care and timely services. So, we know that women of color, again, at higher risk, are dying. So it's not only about access to care. Our system needs resuscitation.

These statistics are a national embarrassment. When you say doctors are dying. Pregnant doctors who obviously have access to good care. So this is a real situation that needs to be addressed on a multitude of levels. Wow. All right.

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