Health department medical detectives find 84% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable

I'm just going to repeat that- 84% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable

Health department medical detectives find 84% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable

These maternal mortality review committees look for clues to what contributed to the deaths — unfilled prescriptions, missed postnatal appointments, signs of trouble that doctors overlooked — to figure out how many of them could have been prevented and how.

The committees are at work in almost 40 states in the U.S. and in the latest and largest compilation of such data, released in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a staggering 84% of pregnancy-related deaths were deemed preventable.

Even more striking to nurse-detectives like Sheffield-Abdullah, is that 53% of the deaths occurred well after women left the hospital, between seven days and a year after delivery.

"We are so baby focused," she says. "Once the baby is here, it's almost like the mother is discarded. Like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. The mom is the wrapper, and the baby is the candy. Once you remove the wrapper, you just discard the wrapper. And what we really need to be thinking about is that fourth trimester, that time after the baby is born."