Maternal and Infant Mortality

Last month, I wrote a brief post about the Preconception Educators program sponsored by the US office of Minority Health. Since then, several other things have come to my attention that are related to either maternal or infant mortality. The Unnecesarean blog pointed out that there is an excellent video about infant mortality in the African-American population available from the Minority Health office. In fact, The Unnecesarean is also hosting a blog carnival about this video! (to run July 4th.)

The video is called Crisis in the Crib and emphasizes this fact: "The rate of death for black babies before their first birthday is twice the rate of white babies and greatly outpaces the national average."

Then, a friend sent me a link to an article about childbirth deaths focusing on the "350,000 women lose their lives each year giving birth or through complications of childbearing."

And, in the summer issue of Midwifery Today I read about the new report from Amnesty International called "Deadly Delivery" about the maternal health crisis in the US: "Mothers die not because the United States can't provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good care is available to all women." Bringing it full circle back to the Crisis in the Crib, I think we could amend that sentence to read, "mothers and babies die...because it lacks the political will to make sure good care is available to all women and their children."

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Molly

CfM Blogger