(Newswire.net — August 5, 2018) — The number of maternal deaths in most developed countries has remained flat or has been dropping from 1990 to 2015, however, in the US it the number of deaths is rising sharply.
The USA Today investigation found out that thousands of women in the US suffer life-altering injuries or die during or soon after childbirth due to the neglect for safety regulations by medical personnel.
According to USA Today, doctors and nurses all over the US should recognize potential danger and react accordingly. There are rules and standards in medical practice in order to prevent complications during childbirth. Nurses are trained to spot high blood pressure and other clues of potential danger to a patient’s life. Doctors are trained to respond adequately within minutes to save lives of mothers. However, they just aren’t doing so, the report says.
More than 50,000 mothers are severely injured and about 700 mothers die each year in the US. USA Today estimates that half of these injuries and deaths could be prevented with better care. The report says that the US fall well behind other developed countries and “today, this is the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth.”
USA Today referred to a collection of more than half a million pages of internal hospital quality records of cases of more than 150 women whose deliveries went wrong. Reporters investigated the adherence to recommended procedures in 75 birthing hospitals. The document revealed shocking neglect of safety regulations that are recommended but not mandatory.
At dozens of hospitals in New York, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas fewer than half of maternity patients were promptly treated for dangerous blood pressure that put them at risk of stroke. At some of those hospitals, less than 15 percent of mothers in peril received recommended treatments, the records show.
Birth hospitals all over the US conceded in interviews with USA TODAY that “they were not taking safety steps such as quantifying women’s blood loss or tracking whether moms with dangerously high blood pressure got proper medication in time.”
The lack of attention happens in small but also in large medical facilities with high-end technology and highly trained personnel.
That happened in one of the top hospitals in South Carolina, when doctors sent YoLanda Mention home with her newborn despite her dangerously high blood pressure. She returned to the hospital with an excruciating headache caused by very high blood pressure and nurses let her wait for hours to get attention.
YoLanda has died of a stroke in the hospital’s waiting room.