According to the study, disparity in this aspect is more extreme in the United States and maternal deaths continue regardless of income and education levels.

Maternal deaths among U.S. African-American college graduates were 5.2 times higher than among white college graduates and 1.6 times higher than among white women with less than a high school diploma, the researchers found.

The UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency linked such discrepancies to a “systemic and historical pattern of racist abuse in the health sector” across North, Central and South America.

“Too often, Afrodescendent women and girls are abused and mistreated, their needs are not taken seriously, and their families are shattered by the preventable death of a loved one during childbirth.”

The region’s Black women and girls “are disadvantaged before, during and after pregnancy,” the report stated, with UNFPA pointing in particular to the prejudices that persist in medical education.

To address the situation and save lives, UNFPA urged governments to collect and analyze robust health data disaggregated by race and ethnicity.

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