maternal mortality

[TreasonousBastard]

I was first interested because certain reading in medieval medicine indicated mortality to be as high as 50%. Yet another reason for our forbears to rush the baby kiln. Not so sure why the mothers put up with it, though.

Anyway, There is no stated scientific or medical reason for human birth to be so much more dangerous than cats and dogs, but someday we may solve the puzzle without bothering with Genesis.

Here are a few of the many things I dug up. There are many more scholarly articles of this sort out there.


https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/maternal-mortality

Maternal Mortality
Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization as the death of a woman from pregnancy-related causes during pregnancy or within 42 days of pregnancy, expressed as a ratio to 100,000 live births in the population being studied (World Health Organization, 2004).

...

Maternal Mortality
Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization as the death of a woman from pregnancy-related causes during pregnancy or within 42 days of pregnancy, expressed as a ratio to 100,000 live births in the population being studied (World Health Organization, 2004).

The dramatic fall in the US MMR during the 20th century has been heralded as a success for both public health programs and obstetrics providers (Figs. 50.1 and50.2).7 The decline, from rates approximating 900 per 100,000 births in 1901 to 9 per 100,000 in 1991, occurred in other resource-rich countries also. This success has been attributed to many factors: the movement of most births to hospitals; improved hygiene and aseptic technique; common use of prenatal care, including screening for preeclampsia; the introduction of blood transfusions and antibiotics; widespread availability of obstetric anesthesia; an increase in training and expertise of obstetrics providers; and an improvement in the overall health of the population. Although all of these may be important, the period of greatest decline was in the 1930s and 1940s, when many hospital-based advances were being introduced. Although the United States in the 1930s was not resource-rich, the advent of state and city maternal mortality review committees focused attention on causes of and solutions for maternal mortality. Developing community consensus that involves collaboration between the public health system and hospitals and providers, together with forming a local maternal mortality review committee (MMRC), should be considered the model when maternal mortality and morbidity are addressed.

More recently, however, the national US metrics for maternal mortality have been rising. In 2014, the MMR in the United States was 23.8 per 100,000 live births. In large part, the increase is due to improved ascertainment. However, there also has been an increase in population risk factors such as maternal age and obesity. Even when increased ascertainment is accounted for, maternal mortality in the United States is substantially higher than in other resource-rich countries.

...

Maternal Mortality : A Global Perspective
Mark B. Landon MD, in Gabbe's Obstetrics: Normal and Problem Pregnancies, 2021

Maternal Health and the Burden of Death and Disability
“Many Births Mean Many Burials”

—Kenyan Proverb
Every year worldwide, it is estimated that more than 300,000 mothers die from preventable causes during pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period—approximately 830 women every day.1,2 Despite ongoing efforts by the global health community, the death rate has dropped by only 44% overall since 1975, far less than the 75% decline anticipated after the introduction of the United Nation (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 1990.3 Despite recent initiatives, which in some resource-poor countries have resulted in quite significant declines over the past few years, too little has happened too late. The irrefutable fact is that the main preventive or remediable interventions to reduce maternal deaths have been well known for many years, and nearly all of these tragedies could be avoided at little or no extra cost. Lives would be saved in those countries which carry a significant burden of maternal and newborn deaths if there was stronger political will to improve the lives of women by placing women's health and reproductive rights far higher up the agenda rather than at the tail end of services, as so often happens. As the father of the Safe Motherhood movement, Professor Mahmoud Fathalla famously said“women are not dying of diseases we cannot treat…they are dying because societies have yet to decide that their lives are worth saving.”

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm

This report updates a previous one that showed maternal mortality rates for 2018 and 2019 (2). In 2020, 861 women were identified as having died of maternal causes in the United States, compared with 754 in 2019 (3). The maternal mortality rate for 2020 was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births compared with a rate of 20.1 in 2019 (Table).

[genxlib]

1. Doing a little math

That puts it at roughly 1 out of every 5000 births results in the mothers death if I understand the statistics.

I would say that represents the death and mayhem that they are willing to overlook.

But I would suspect that it is worse than that since many of the abortions that will be prevented are specifically the kind that cause or result from complications. Perhaps much higher.

[Hekate]

2. One major diff between animals and humans is the size of the baby's head...

(You stated: “Anyway, There is no stated scientific or medical reason for human birth to be so much more dangerous than cats and dogs, but someday we may solve the puzzle without bothering with Genesis.”)

And that is because of the size of the baby’s brain. Yet human babies are born much less ready to meet the world than baby kittens or baby puppies. Why is that? Because human babies have so far to go in brain development before they can be independent. Because animals’ brains are smaller, their heads are smaller, they slide out of their mothers just like that, and in a few months they are grown and on their own.

Mother Nature had to make a compromise with human women: if we wanted to be able to walk around, there’s only so big our pelvises could get. That baby’s big head has to squeeze out a narrow passage — not just the muscles, but the bones.

Lifetime maternal nutrition plays a role. If a woman has had ricketts as a child, her pelvic bones may be malformed. Age of the mother plays a role: among the reasons that teenage mothers 15 and under are at high risk is that their bones have not finished growing, and that includes the pelvic bones — all the more so with little girls.

The human mother needs a lot more assistance giving birth than just a clean box with shredded newspaper in it.

Human women are more complicated than female animals, in every respect. You never hear about an animal with post-partum depression — or do we? Distressed rabbits will eat their young. Hmmm.

That’s it for now. Thank you for asking, TB.

[Hestia]

3. +1,000