LONDON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- The United States is in a maternal health crisis, an opinion piece carried by The Guardian has said, citing new data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week.
The rate of maternal mortality -- defined as deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of giving birth -- rose by 40 percent in 2021 in the United States, it said on Monday.
At a rate of 33 deaths for every 100,000 live births, 1,205 women died of maternal causes that year, it said.
The United States has 10 or more times the rate of pregnancy-related death in Australia, Austria, Israel, Japan and Spain, it noted.
That maternal mortality rate in the United States was more than twice as high for Black women, it said, as they died from "racist negligence."
"The racial disparities in the data are staggering: Black women are dramatically more likely to die in childbirth. Some of this can be attributed to the broad health disparities between Black Americans and other groups -- the result of the strains of poverty, overwork, exposure to pollution, and vulnerability to violence that have long kept Black people in the U.S. physically overtaxed and under-cared for," it said.
