Why Women Are Dying in Mexico From Childbirth

Hi folks, it’s Kristen here in NYC. The pandemic has had a lot of ripple effects on health-care systems around the world. In Mexico, one of those was that the number of women dying from childbirth increased by more than 60%. But first ...

Women die during or shortly after giving birth way more often than you might expect, even here in the US. In New Jersey, for example, about 26 women die for every 100,000 births — one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation. Those rates are linked to a lack of access to care like routine check-ins before and after birth that can catch problems before they become life-threatening.

In 2021, as Mexico battled the height of the pandemic, the maternal mortality rate was about three times as bad as it is in New Jersey. Before Covid, things had actually been improving. But since the pandemic began, more than 2,000 women have died in Mexico from childbirth.

For the latest installment of Bloomberg’s The Pay Check podcast, reporter Kelsey Butler flew down to Mexico to figure out what happened there. (I edited the episode — you can listen to it here!)