HJBR Sep/Oct 2024

MATERNAL MORTALITY CRISIS 16 SEP / OCT 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE   Every two minutes — 800 times a day — a woman somewhere in the world dies in pregnancy or childbirth. In the U.S. alone, 817 women in 2022 died during or shortly after pregnancy, or in childbirth. 1 In a coun- try with purportedly one of the best health systems in the world, how is this possible? TheU.S. stands at 55th in theworld rankings of maternal mortality rates, ranked best to worst, which places us last among all de- veloped nations. 2 The maternal mortality rate in 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with Norway, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, which had rates of 3 per 100,000 during the same time period. The U.S. maternal mortality rate runs approximately twice that of other high-income industrialized countries. 3,4 If we look within the U.S. alone, Loui- siana has the highest maternal mortal- ity rate in the nation at 58.1 per 100,000 births; double the national average of 23.8 per 100,000. 5,6 The latest CDC report comparing infant mortality rates per state ranks Louisiana second highest, surpassed only slightly by Mississippi. State demo- graphics reveal that 39% of the birthing population in the state are Black/African American, and for them, the infant mor- tality rates are 2.5 times higher and ma- ternal mortality rates are 4 times higher than the rates for White women. March of MOTHERS AT RISK: Uncovering the Systemic Issues Behind Louisiana’s Maternal Mortality Crisis by Michelle Collins, PhD, CNM, RNC-EFM, FACNM, FAAN, FNAP