Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
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Thursday, May 18, 2017

This is an important read

This really floored me when I read it. Any preventable death is one too many. We need to put just as much effort in maternal health as neonatal medicine.

Focus On Infants During Childbirth Leaves U.S. Moms In Danger

Key findings of the article: (quoted from the sidebar)
  • More American women are dying of pregnancy-related complications than any other developed country. Only in the U.S. has the rate of women who die been rising.
  • There's a hodgepodge of hospital protocols for dealing with potentially fatal complications, allowing for treatable complications to become lethal.
  • Hospitals — including those with intensive care units for newborns — can be woefully unprepared for a maternal emergency.
  • Federal and state funding show only 6 percent of block grants for "maternal and child health" actually go to the health of mothers.
  • In the U.S, some doctors entering the growing specialty of maternal-fetal medicine were able to complete that training without ever spending time in a labor-delivery unit.

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