COVID and Discrimination Aggravated Maternal Mortality in Latin America

Adequate maternal care during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period is essential to curbing the high maternal mortality rates in Latin America, which stopped falling due to women's health care problems during the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Government of Tigre / ArgentinaBy Mario OsavaRIO DE JANEIRO, May 27 2022 (IPS) Brazil had the dubious distinction of champion of maternal mortality in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a 77 percent increase in such deaths between 2019 and 2021. A total of 1,575 women died in childbirth or in the following six weeks in the year prior to the pandemic in Latin America’s largest and most populous country, with a population of 214 million. Two years later the total had climbed to 2,787, according to preliminary data from the Health Ministry’s Mortality Information System. In Mexico, the second-most populated country in the region, with 129 million inhabitants, the increase was 49 percent, to 1,036 maternal deaths in 2021. And in Peru, a country of 33 million people, the total rose by 63 percent to 493 maternal deaths. In Colombia, recent data are not available. But authorities acknowledge that in 2021 COVID-19 became the leading cause of maternal deaths, as it was in Mexico. Brazil is the extreme example of multiple mistakes and of stubborn denialism that led to many avoidable deaths, particularly of pregnant women, according to experts and women’s rights activists on the occasion of the International Day of A...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Development & Aid Editors' Choice Featured Gender Headlines Health Latin America & the Caribbean Population Regional Categories TerraViva United Nations Women's Health Brazil Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) Pan-American Source Type: news