Infant, maternal mortality: How community input in tool development could save lives | MobiHealthNe…

Adorned with balloons and celebratory flowers, the maternity ward is often seen as the beacon of hope at a hospital. But for many families, childbirth is a challenging, dangerous and sometimes even fatal process for both moms and babies.

This is particularly true in the US where women are more likely to die of a childbirth or pregnancy-related cause than any other affluent country in the world, according to the CDC.

This crisis appears to only be growing in recent years; in 1987 the US had a pregnancy-related death rate of 7.2 cases per 100,000 women, that number has spiked to 18 cases per 100,000 women in 2014, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Cardiovascular disease, non-cardiovascular disease and infection or sepsis are among the leading causes of maternal death, the CDC reports.

Infant mortality rate in the US has also caused many in the health community concern, as it outpaced other affluent countries including Canada, Germany and Japan, with a rate of 5.9 deaths per 1,000 births in 2016.

The black community has been impacted hardest by this maternal and infant health crisis. According to the CDC, the risk of pregnancy-related deaths for black women is three to four times higher than those of white women — a racial disparity present across socioeconomic lines. In 2016 black infants died at a rate of 11.4 per 1,000 births, as compared to white babies that died at a rate of 4.9 per 1,000 births.