Pregnant Afrodescendent women are abused and neglected due to systemic racism and sexism in health systems across the Americas, new UNFPA report finds

New York, 12 July 2023 – Afrodescendent women and girls across the Americas are more likely to die during childbirth, a fact often attributed to their individual failure to seek timely treatment, poor lifestyle choices or hereditary predispositions. New analysis by UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, categorically refutes these misconceptions, finding a systemic and historical pattern of racist abuse in the health sector across the continents.

Starting in medical education and extending to policymaking and the delivery of health services, Afrodescendent women and girls are systematically neglected and mistreated. The mistreatment faced by Afrodescendent women when receiving health care can include verbal and physical abuse, denial of quality care, and refusal of pain relief. As a consequence, they face increased complications during pregnancy and delayed interventions, which too often result in death.

Key findings include:

• Afrodescendants experience disproportionate levels of mistreatment in health settings, some of which is based on unscientific, racist and slavery-era beliefs still present in medical curricula.
• Systemic neglect is also reflected in data collection: Only 11 out of 35 countries in the Americas collect maternal health data broken down by race.
• Only one third of the 32 national health plans surveyed identified Afrodescendants as a population that experiences barriers to health.
• Only four countries collect globally comparable maternal death data that is broken down by race. 
• Where data is available, the largest discrepancy in maternal death rates is in the United States, where Black women are three times more likely to die than white women.

“The scourge of racism continues for Black women and girls in the Americas, many of whom are descendants of the victims of enslavement,” says UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem. “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. Justice and equality will only be possible when our healthcare systems see these women and provide them with respectful, compassionate care.”

The disparity is most extreme in the world’s richest nation: In the United States, Black women and girls are three times more likely to die while giving birth or within six weeks of giving birth compared to non-Afrodescendent and non-Hispanic women. Meanwhile, in Suriname the rate is 2.5 times higher; and 1.6 times higher in Brazil and Colombia. There are an estimated 209 million people of African descent in the Americas.

The report also finds that higher income and education offer little protection: Maternal deaths among African American college graduates in the United States are 1.6 times higher than among white women with less than a high school diploma.

The UNFPA report, developed with the participation of UN Women, Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, and the National Birth Equity Collaborative, calls on governments, international organizations, education and health sectors to take action to ensure access to quality maternal care for women of African descent and reduce high rates of maternal mortality.

In addition to calling on governments to collect and analyse robust health data broken down by race and ethnicity, the report urges medical schools to address racist ideology in training curricula and calls on hospitals to establish policies to end physical and verbal abuse damaging Afrodescendent women and girls.

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About UNFPA:

UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. UNFPA’s mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled. UNFPA calls for the realization of reproductive rights for all and supports access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services, including voluntary family planning, quality maternal health care and comprehensive sexuality education.