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Medical school curricula, for example, include erroneous claims that black women’s nerve endings are “less sensitive” and require less anesthesia, and that black women’s blood clots faster than white women’s, delaying the treatment of dangerous hemorrhages, according to the report. He also found that illustrations from childbirth textbooks were depicted on the pelvic anatomy of European women, which could lead to unnecessary interventions when non-white variability was deemed “abnormal or high risk.”
“When a black woman dies during childbirth, whether in São Paulo, Bogotá or New York, it’s often attributed to her lifestyle or individual failure: she didn’t make it in time to see the doctor or nurse, she made bad life decisions, she was predisposed to certain medical conditions. And then the world goes on,” Dr. Kanem said.
The new report, she said, “categorically refutes that.”
Background: Maternal deaths are on the rise.
The overall maternal mortality ratio of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in Latin America, North America and the Caribbean increased by about 15 percent between 2016 and 2020, sparking officials’ interest in possible contributing factors, including race. There are more than 200 million people of African descent in the Americas – one in four in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one in seven in the United States and Canada.
Of the countries that provide maternal mortality rates by race, the United States has the lowest overall mortality rate, but the largest racial disparities. In the United States, black women are three times more likely than white women to die during or shortly after childbirth. These problems persist across all income and education levels, as black women with a college degree are still 1.6 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women who have not completed high school.
And then: the appeals of the UN medical schools, health care providers and governments into action.
UN officials have urged medical schools to review their curricula and hospitals to strengthen policies around denial of care and patient abuse. Medical teams must also consider innovative ways to help black women overcome structural barriers that make it difficult to get enough prenatal care, officials said, such as lack of access to reliable transportation and insurance. The agency has suggested partnerships with various black traditional healers and midwives to help navigate long-standing reservations.
The UN project also revealed a profound shortage of surveillance data, which likely prevented the issues from becoming well known, he said. The report encourages each country to strengthen its data collection efforts. Without a transparent look at the problem, according to the report, it will be nearly impossible to design interventions to address it.
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