The maternal mortality rate has risen in the U.S., sharply contrasting with global trends, reports The New York Times.
Global maternal mortality fell by 44 percent between 1990 and 2015, according to UN inter-agency estimates. However, data released Wednesday by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research group funded by the Gates Foundation and based at the University of Washington, show the United States has trended in the other direction.
According to The New York Times, the data shows there were 23 maternal deaths —deaths due to complications from pregnancy or childbirth — per 100,000 births in the United States in 2005 compared to 28 in 2013, the most recent year for which the institute had detailed data for the U.S. The 2013 U.S. maternal mortality rate was more than three times Canada's 2013 rate, according to the article. The institute projects the American rate dipped in the last two years to 25 by 2015.
Internationally, the institute found only 24 countries had an increase in maternal mortality from 2000 to 2015, including South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, though their rates were much higher. In all, the American rate was up by more than half since 1990, according to the institute.
In the article, the increase in maternal mortality is attributed to heart problems and other chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes. According to The New York Times, researchers have theorized that an increase in obesity — particularly acute among poor black women, who have much higher rates of maternal mortality than whites — may be contributing to the problem.
"The really scary thing to us is all the deaths from cardiovascular disease and heart failure," William Callaghan, MD, who runs the Maternal and Infant Health Branch in the Division of Reproductive Health at the CDC, said in the report. "It's a quarter of all deaths. There were almost none in the remote past."
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