According to data released Thursday, the US maternal death rate skyrocketed in 2021, the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, showing black women are more than twice as likely to die as white women.
Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization as death occurring during or within 42 days of pregnancy from any cause related to or aggravated by that pregnancy or its treatment.
A total of 1,205 women died in the United States in 2021, compared to 861 in 2020 and 754 in 2019, according to a report by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
The maternal mortality rate was therefore 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births in 2021, compared to 23.8 per 100,000 births in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019.
The last time the US maternal mortality rate was this high was officially in the mid-1960s — although new methodology has been used since 2018.
This is also the worst rate among developed countries.
In fact, thanks to medical advances, maternal mortality generally declined around the world in the 20th century. But since the 2000s, unlike most other comparable countries, the United States has been back on the wrong track.
And the data also show strong inequalities.
In 2021, the maternal mortality rate for black women was 69.9 per 100,000 births, more than double that for white women, which was 26.6 per 100,000 births.
The NCHS offered no explanation for this sharp increase in the maternal death rate in 2021, or for the disparities between black and white women.
But medical experts say the pandemic is a big factor, as are socioeconomic conditions and the lack of access to antenatal and postnatal care for many black women.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic and tragic impact on maternal death rates, but we cannot hide the fact that there has been – and is still being – a maternal mortality crisis,” said Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
“Pregnant and postpartum Black people continue to be responsible for a disproportionate number of maternal deaths at alarmingly increasing rates,” he added in a statement. “This trend must be stopped.”