April 7, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Government messages to stay home, lockdowns, fear, and disruption of services at hospitals in response to COVID-19 have led to increased “avoidable deaths of both mothers and babies” during the pandemic, a study published this week in The Lancet Global Health found.
“Global maternal and fetal outcomes have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an increase in maternal deaths, stillbirth, ruptured ectopic pregnancies, and maternal depression,” according to research from several institutions, including the Fetal Medicine Unit at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and King’s College London.
The study, which combined data from 40 studies worldwide and measured maternal and neonatal health indicators before and during pandemic government restrictions, found considerable disparity between high-income Western countries and poorer developing countries.
‘Matter of urgency’
Rising maternal death rates are a “matter of urgency” in low to middle-income countries like Kenya where unpublished data showed a surge of maternal mortality and pooled data found that women were 37% more likely to die in childbirth during the coronavirus outbreak than before it. The finding is “particularly concerning,” the researchers said, because poor countries already had the world’s highest
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