DC ‘Most Dangerous Place’ for Black Women to Give Birth in US

In Washington, D.C., from 2012 to 2016, 18 black women died from pregnancy-related causes. The District has the 8^th worst pregnancy-related death rate in the U.S., according to D.C. Department of Health.

Black women are affected more as for every 13 deaths of white women, 44 black women died from pregnancy-related causes. In the U.S., about 700 women die every year from childbirth, over half of them preventable, according to the Center for Disease Control.

“Washington DC is the most dangerous place to give birth in the United States if you are African American. If you are a white woman, you’ll do very well in the nation’s capital. We have a major disparity problem here in D.C,” said Dr. Barbara Levy from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Levy is also the Vice President of Health Policy and administers ACOG’s Office of Global Women’s Health programs.

However, the figures are disputed by D.C. health officials who believe that maternal mortality ratio can’t be used to compare D.C. with other cities.

Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the director of D.C. Department of Health, said that 20 or more figures of black women deaths every year is not the correct figure. “We don’t want a community being terrified about black women being pregnant. We don’t want a community that thinks the statistics are just there and there is inaction. We want everyone to know that this is something we all have to rally as a community to know the facts,” said Nesbitt.

But what can’t be disputed is that fact that there have been 18 pregnancy-related deaths in D.C. from 2012-2016, and among them 17 women were black and one was Hispanic. The figures about maternal deaths for the year 2017 are not available yet, according to the Department of Health.