Prometheus 6

Race: Studies have found that the maternal death rate for black women is at least three times greater than is it is for whites. Black women are more susceptible to complications such as high blood pressure and are more likely to get inadequate prenatal care.

Quality of care: Three studies indicate that at least 40 percent of maternal deaths could have been prevented.

US childbirth mortality rate increases
Obesity, rise in caesareans eyed as factors
By Mike Stobbe, Associated Press  |  August 25, 2007

ATLANTA -- US women are dying in childbirth at the highest rate in decades, new government figures show. Though the risk of death is very small, specialists say increasing maternal obesity and a jump in caesarean sections are partly to blame.

Some number crunchers said a change in how such deaths are reported may also be a factor.

"Those of us who look at this a lot say it's probably a little bit of both," said Dr. Jeffrey King, an obstetrician who led a recent New York state review of maternal deaths.

The US maternal mortality rate rose to 13 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2004, according to statistics released this week by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The rate was 12 per 100,000 live births in 2003, the first time the maternal death rate rose above 10 since 1977.

Death in childbirth remains fairly rare in the United States. The death of infants is much more common -- the nation's infant mortality rate was 679 per 100,000 live births in 2004.

Maternal deaths were a much more common tragedy long ago. Nearly 1 in every 100 live births resulted in a mother's death as recently as 90 years ago.

But the fact that maternal deaths are rising at all these days is shocking, said Tim Davis, a Virginia man whose wife, Elizabeth, died after childbirth in 2000.

"The hardest thing to understand is how in this day and age, in a modern hospital with doctors and nurses, that somebody can just die like that," he said.