Staggering death rate for pregnant Black women

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--------------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 26, 1999
issue of Workers World newspaper
--------------------------------

RACISM IN HEALTH CARE

STAGGERING DEATH RATE FOR PREGNANT BLACK WOMEN

By Monica Moorehead <monica@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

"Racism ... needs to be studied if we want to understand health
differences between Blacks and whites." This simple but profound statement
was made by Dr. Richard David, associate professor at the College of
Medicine at the University of Illinois, two years ago at a conference
organized by the Northern New Jersey Maternal Child Health Consortium.

The words ring just as true today.

They appeared in a front-page article in the Aug. 8 New York Times titled,
"Black Mothers' Mortality Rate Under Scrutiny." The article focused
attention on a study released this past spring by the Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta.

The study was a compilation of statistics exposing the fact that Black
women in the U.S. are nearly four times more likely to die during
childbirth than white women. The numbers include both poor, working-poor
and middle-class Black women.

The statistics speak for themselves.

>From 1987 until 1996, one out of every 5,102 Black women died in
childbirth. The number for white women was one out of every 18,868.

This disturbing disparity has remained relatively constant over the past
four decades. This particular gap ranks among the highest in U.S. public
health. And it comes at a time when the overall infant mortality rate has
decreased.

The factors that make pregnant Black women at high-risk include
hypertension, diabetes and obesity--which are closely associated with
malnutrition and poor diet.

The lack of adequate pre-natal care is tied to the increased levels of
poverty due to President Clinton's eradication of welfare.

Drug and alcohol abuse, as well as exposure to environmental toxins and
violence, are important factors as well.

All of these conditions have made Black women more prone to high levels of
stress on the job and in their daily lives as they struggle to survive in
a racist and sexist society.

`OFF THE SCALE'

Even the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. David Satcher--who is Black--has spoken
out on this issue. He stated that "the disparity is important... If we
were comparing Black women in this country with women in Tanzania, we
would be talking about how great we are doing. We are not.

"In this country, we have a certain standard of expectation about the risk
of women in pregnancy, and Black women are off the scale right now."

No other city has felt this crisis more profoundly than Washington, D.C.

D.C. is truly a tale of two cities. One part of the city is home to the
administrative branch of U.S. imperialism, while the other part is home to
a deeply impoverished and colonized African American community.

At D.C. General Hospital, the city's largest public health facility, three
quarters of pregnant Black women are classified as high risk. It is no
wonder that the mortality rate of Black mothers there is the highest in
the entire country.

The mortality rate of Black mothers cannot be separated from the mortality
rate of Black infants.

Black infants are two-and-a-half times more likely to die before the age
of 1 than white infants. The CDC estimates that by the year 2000, the rate
will climb to three times as high. In the poorer neighborhoods, the rates
are even more astronomical.

The Black infant mortality rate in the U.S. is the highest among the most
industrialized countries, and is even higher than some developing ones.

For example, the ratio of infant mortality in Washington is twice that of
socialist Havana, Cuba. Seventy-nine countries have a/ lower infant
mortality rate than Harlem, according to Harper's Index.

HEALTH CARE: WHO CAN AFFORD IT?

Cutbacks in health care, especially in the poorer neighborhoods, have had
a devastating impact.

There has been a general policy of closing down hospitals in the inner
cities. In Chicago alone, 10 hospitals have been shut down recently--all
in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

In the remaining hospitals, access to care has been severely reduced. In
Cook County Hospital, with a clientele that is 90 percent people of color,
the waiting period for an appointment can be upwards of six months.

Local private hospitals use a policy called "patient dumping" whereby huge
numbers of patients who come through their doors without health insurance
are transferred to Cook County--no matter how severe the health problem
may be.

Another study, released this spring, concluded that the Special
Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and
Medicaid helped to reduce infant deaths.

Dr. Karen P. Carver from Penn State stated, "WIC and Medicaid have helped
poor women reduce infant mortality on two levels. First, WIC and Medicaid
participants have lower infant death rates associated with pregnancy and
delivery.

"Second, WIC participation by mothers is beneficial for infants at risk of
death due primarily to environmental or external causes, including
infectious and contagious diseases and accidents."

The vast majority of women participating in the WIC program are African
American, young and very poor. While the WIC program has remained intact
for the moment, millions of single, poor women and their children lost
their Medicaid coverage when they were eliminated from the welfare rolls.

The U.S. health care system is a vital institution riddled with racism.
The only concern of this profit-driven industry is to rake in billions of
dollars. Health care under capitalism is creating a genocidal crisis for
millions of people.

Only a social revolution can assure that health care can be a right for
all and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.

                             - END -

(Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed.  For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., New
York, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@xxxxxxxxxxxx Web: http://www.workers.org)


[Articles on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and posted on other mailing
lists/discussion forums, as long as proper attribution is given to the
author and originating publication, and the wording is not altered in
any way. In particular, if there is a reference to a web site where an
article was originally located, please do *not* remove that.

Do *not* publish or post the entire text of any copyrighted articles on
web sites (web-based discussion forums exempted) or in print, without
getting *explicit* permission from the article author or copyright
holder. Check the fair use provisions of the copyright law in your
country for details on what you can and can't do.

As a courtesy, we'd appreciate it if you let folks know how to subscribe
to BRC-NEWS, by leaving in the first two lines of the signature below.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News/Alerts/Announcements
------------------------------------------------------------------