Why are Georgia moms dying in labor, now more than ever? Here’s what to know
In a matter of a year, Georgia’s maternal mortality rate doubled to 49.2 deaths per 100,000 live births.
The spike came during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and was higher than the United States’ 32.9 death rate from 2020 to 2021.
The Georgia Department of Public Health found that COVID-19 was the second leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths from 2019 to 2021, only surpassed by cardiovascular conditions. Additionally, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report in October 2022 that found COVID-19 contributed to 25% of the country’s maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021.
The World Health Organization defines maternal deaths as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of the termination of pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes, such as a car accident or drug overdose. The maternal mortality rate is the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
But quantifying maternal mortality can be complicated, and not all experts agree on the best way to do it.
A 2024 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology suggests a much lower national maternal mortality rate — 10.4 deaths per 100,000 live births from 2018 to 2021 — than the CDC’s 32.9 deaths in 2021.
The CDC’s potentially inflated number comes from the addition in 2003 of a pregnancy checkbox to the national death certificate. CDC analysts published a report in 2020 acknowledging that the checkbox may have led to the misclassification of some deaths as maternal deaths.
However, a CDC spokesperson told NPR in a written statement that the CDC disagrees with the study’s findings and believes that the methods used by the researchers led to a “substantial undercount of maternal mortality.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2024 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Why are Georgia moms dying in labor, now more than ever? Here’s what to know."
