Item — HN Reader

TLDR, maternal morbidity in US sources often widens the net to include things like drug overdoses. Whereas other sources do not, and that can explain the discrepancy between US and other nation maternal mortality rates.

Read this article the other day and has some breakdowns to show how many of those maternal deaths are for things not directly related to pregnancy issues (like embolism or eclampsia).

https://reviewtoaction.org/sites/default/files/2022-08/2014-...

1 comments

> TLDR, maternal morbidity in US sources often widens the net to include things like drug overdoses.

The article doesn't mention drug overdoses specifically, though it does mention cancer as a common cause not related to pregnancy that is increasing maternal death rates.

Ironically, drug overdoses are themselves subject to this same issue: many of the officially-reported stats for both hospitalizations and deaths due to drugs use a method that is essentially equivalent to "did this person report having taken a substance" (or "were traces of a substance detected"), regardless of the amount taken or the cause of death, which means that those are overestimated as well.