Why are black women still more likely to die in childbirth?

The UK has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, but black women are still twice as likely as white women to die from pregnancy related causes.1 Historically, this disparity has been as high as fivefold, kickstarting initiatives such as Five X More to push for improved maternal outcomes in black women.23 Despite improvements in recent years, racial inequalities stubbornly persist.

Marian Knight, professor of maternal and child population health at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, leads MBRRACE-UK (Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries), which investigates the deaths of women and babies who die during pregnancy or shortly after pregnancy in the UK. She tells The BMJ, “Women from different ethnic groups are dying from the same causes but at disproportionately greater numbers.

“Maternal mortality is the tip of the iceberg: we know that these disparities exist for morbidity as well as mortality. We actually need to be looking at morbidity to see progress and see how changes in services or different interventions can actually make a difference.”