Health Topics

The World Health Organization defines maternal mortality as the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy, regardless of how long the pregnancy lasted or any cause related to the pregnancy. Nationwide, the overall maternal death rate in the US rose from 23.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020 to 32.9 per 100,000 in 2021. That rate has more than doubled since 2000, when it was only 9.8 deaths for every 100,000 live births, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Local: In San Francisco, the estimated maternal mortality rate is 11.2 deaths per 100,00 deaths. The top 3 local causes were embolism, infection, and chronic disease. Pregnant Black women made up a more significant percentage of those deaths. Over the past ten years, even though Black/African American mothers had an average of 4 out of the 100 births in San Francisco, they made up 5 out of 10 maternal deaths reported.

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the yearly ratio of infant deaths to live births. Nationwide, the IMR declined 2.9% from 558.3 infant deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 541.9 in 2020. The ten leading causes during that time were:

• Congenital malformations
• Low birth weight
• Sudden infant death syndrome
• Unintentional injuries
• Maternal complications
• Cord and placental complications
• Bacterial sepsis of newborn
• Respiratory distress of newborn
• Diseases of the circulatory system
• Neonatal hemorrhage

This accounted for 67.5% of all infant deaths in the United States. Local: In San Francisco, between 2020 to 2021, the number of deaths among children under the age of 1 per 1,000 live births was 3.92 deaths per 1,000 births. The leading causes of death during that time were low birth weight, SUID (Sudden Unexpected Infant Death), and birth trauma. Between 2014 and 2017, the San Francisco Department of public health noted that black infants died at a rate of 5.6 per 1,000 births, a stark difference from the Asian rate of 2.5 deaths, the Caucasian rate of 2.1 deaths, and even the Hispanic rate of 4.3 deaths.