Last year, there were 17 total maternal deaths - these are deaths that occur either while a woman is pregnant or right after she gives birth. It's a statistic that has gotten lost in the COVID wave but it's one that needs to be highlighted.
In this day and age, 17 pregnant women losing their lives - and some of their babies as well - is too large of a number. But most of those deaths are in COVID patients - and technical advisor in the maternal and child health unit at the Ministry of Health, Dr Natalia Beer, explained that it's been hard getting pregnant women to get their vaccine.
Dr. Natalia L. Beer, Ministry of Health and Wellness
"We had a total of 17 maternal deaths last year. Out of these, 8 were due to Covid19 and we highly recommend for every woman or couple that do not want to become pregnant or have kids, there are contraceptive methods available even without out of pocket payment that they can access, because the worst case scenario is Delta for women that got pregnant got complicated and dying, so if we were to remove the Covid19, we obviously would not have seen much change between 2020 and 2021, but Covid19 again is a vaccine preventable disease, but yet we are struggling in getting pregnant women to get vaccinated. To date we have more than 600 women that got infected with Covid19 during pregnancy since the beginning of the pandemic in Belize."
