Why is childbirth still sometimes fatal for women, and what measures is modern medicine taking to reduce these risks?
In: Biology
People come in all shapes and sizes. The mother’s underlying health plays a rather major role because pregnancy is very taxing on the human body. Things like age, high blood pressure, overweight, underweight, smoking are shown to correlate to difficult pregnancies. On top of that are things that can happen BECAUSE of pregnancy – very high blood pressure, anemia, diabetes etc.
Modern medicine has been ENORMOUSLY successful in reducing pregnancy risks. Just modern economies like US. In 1900, on average 850 women out of 100,000 died due to pregnancy. Today, this is in the range of 10 per 100,000 births. This is 85 times less. Even taken at a global level – the maternal mortality rate today is way below that of 1900 USA. Most countries have made significant (ie double digit percentage) decreases even in the last 25 years.
Longer article:
[https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality/](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality/)
Latest Answers