Category Archives: Health

“Mothers die too often because women’s health isn’t valued in the US”

Vox: California decided it was tired of women bleeding to death in childbirth. “The maternal mortality rate in the state is a third of the American average. Here’s why.” By Julia Belluz, Jun 29, 2017.

“[T]here’s been a decline in access to contraception and abortion in many parts of the US, leading to more unplanned, unwanted — and, in some cases, more dangerous — pregnancies.

The opioid epidemic certainly hasn’t made births safer for moms, and health care access remains poor for low-income and minority women, who have among the worst maternal health outcomes.”

Also:

“Large employers in California, including Disney and Apple, as well as insurance payers have recognized that making births safer saves them money. They’ve supported CMQCC by helping pressure hospitals to follow the steps to protect women in the workforce – and avoid incurring unnecessary costs that drive up insurance premiums.”

Emphases mine.

ProPublica and NPR: The Last Person You’d Expect to Die in Childbirth. By Nina Martin, ProPublica, and Renee Montagne, NPR, May 12, 2017.

“The U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world, and 60 percent are preventable. The death of Lauren Bloomstein, a neonatal nurse, in the hospital where she worked illustrates a profound disparity: The health care system focuses on babies but often ignores their mothers.”

ProPublica: Lost Mothers. “An estimated 700 to 900 women in the U.S. died from pregnancy-related causes in 2016. We have identified 134 of them so far.” By Nina Martin, ProPublica, Emma Cillekens and Alessandra Freitas, special to ProPublica, July 17, 2017.

Links via MetaFilter.

“I was appalled by the number of people affected by lead contamination in water.”

NPR the two-way: Troubled By Flint Water Crisis, 11-Year-Old Girl Invents Lead-Detecting Device.

“Gitanjali Rao, 11, says she was appalled by the drinking water crisis in Flint, Mich. — so she designed a device to test for lead faster. She was named “America’s Top Young Scientist” on Tuesday at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minn.”

“She lives in a tiny rented shed that has no plumbing. She gets water from a brother who lives in a trailer across the road.”

Washington Post: After the check is gone. “The underground economy has long been a part of rural America, where some receiving disability benefits are forced to work to survive.”

“Mallory, W.Va. — For the people of the hollow, opportunity begins where the road ends, and that was where they now went, driving onto a dirt path that vanished into forest. It was here that they came at the end of the month, when the disability checks were long gone, and the next were still days away, and the only option left was also one of the worst.

The goal was simple. Get to the top of the mountain. Collect as many wild roots as possible to sell to a local buyer. Avoid the copperheads and rattlesnakes. Descend before the rains came again and flooded their way out.”

And this is not in a third-world-coutry, it’s in the country that calls itself the “greatest country on earth”.

“Two 3-year-old boys were shot by another toddler who found and inadvertently fired a gun at the home of their babysitter in Dearborn, Mich.”

Washington Post: American toddlers are still shooting people on a weekly basis this year.

“The Dearborn boys are at least the 42nd and 43rd people to get shot by a child under the age of 4 this year, according to a database of accidental child-involved shootings maintained by Everytown, a gun violence prevention group. On average, someone gets shot by an American toddler a little more frequently than once a week, similar to previous years.”

“Universal health care isn’t a policy conversation. It’s not a political talking point.”

Medium: Why I Believe in Universal Healthcare. By Jenny Nicholson.

“I was a junior in high school when my mother had her first heart attack. She was in her bed, moaning, crying that she couldn’t breathe.

We were too poor to have a phone, so I ran barefoot to the neighbor’s house, 1/4 mile down the road. I’ve never moved so quickly in my life.

It was a 30-minute drive to the hospital and, as we followed the ambulance, I prayed the whole time that my mother wouldn’t die.”

Link via MeFi Projects.