About half of Texas lacks ready access to OB-GYN care, making it difficult for women to obtain contraception or for pregnant women to confirm the health of their babies. (photo: Delcia Lopez/Reuters)
Texas
Has Highest Maternal Mortality Rate in Developed World, Study Finds
By Molly Redden, Guardian UK
20 August 16
As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to
reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just
a two-year period
The
rate of Texas women who died from complications related to their pregnancy
doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study has found, for an estimated maternal
mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the
developed world.
The
finding comes from a report, appearing in the September issue of the journal
Obstetrics and Gynecology, that the maternal mortality rate in the United
States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world
succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality
declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths
per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 – or about 27%.
But
the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality
rates in a two-year period was hard to explain “in the absence of war, natural
disaster, or severe economic upheaval”.
From
2000 to the end of 2010, Texas’s estimated maternal mortality rate hovered
between 17.7 and 18.6 per 100,000 births. But after 2010, that rate had leaped
to 33 deaths per 100,000, and in 2014 it was 35.8. Between 2010-2014, more than
600 women died for reasons related to their pregnancies.
No
other state saw a comparable increase.
In the
wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on
Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas’s reproductive
healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state
legislature cut $73.6m from the state’s family planning budget of $111.5m. The
two-thirds cut forced more than 80 family planning clinics to shut down across
the state. The remaining clinics managed
to provide services – such as low-cost or free birth control, cancer screenings
and well-woman exams – to only half as many women as before.
At the
same time, Texas eliminated all Planned Parenthood clinics – whether or not
they provided abortion services – from the state program that provides poor
women with preventative healthcare. Previously, Planned Parenthood clinics in
Texas offered cancer screenings and contraception to more than 130,000 women.
In
2013, Texas restored funding to the family planning budget to original levels.
But the healthcare providers who survived the initial cuts reported struggles
to restore services to their original levels.
Indeed,
the report said it was “puzzling” that Texas’s maternal mortality rate rose
only modestly from 2000 to 2010 before doubling between 2011 and 2012. The
researchers, hailing from the University of Maryland, Boston University’s
school of public health and Stanford University’s medical school, called for
further study. But they noted that starting in 2011, Texas drastically reduced
the number of women’s health clinics within its borders.
The
report comes just as public health advocates are raising questions about
Texas’s ability to prepare for the Zika virus, which is transmitted by a common
species of mosquito and has been linked to severe birth defects. The World
Health Organization has advised women in areas of local transmission to delay
pregnancy.
Texas
is one of several southern states where health officials say there is a risk of
a local outbreak. But about half the state lacks ready access to OB-GYN care, making it
difficult for women to obtain contraception or for pregnant women to confirm
the health of their babies. Just this month, Texas’s health department drew fire for allocating
$1.6m of the $18m the state budgets for low-income women’s family planning to
an anti-abortion group that does not provide basic health services.
“There
is a need to redouble efforts to prevent maternal deaths and improve maternity
care for the 4 million US women giving birth each year,” the authors said.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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