Preventing maternal deaths is one of the main priorities of the Maternal and Child Health Unit at the Ministry of Health, and during COVID, the incidents of mothers dying while pregnant or while giving birth spiked greatly. And now, even post pandemic, some developed countries are still seeing an alarmingly high rate of maternal deaths.
In Belize, however, while that number spiked in 2021, it was reduced in 2022, and so far in 2023, there have been no maternal deaths reported. Today, Dr Natalia Beer gave us more details via Zoom.
Dr. Natalia Beer, Technical Advisor in Maternal and Child Health
"Maternal mortality is definitely one of the key indicators and outcomes that we try our best to provide quality care to have at the end a healthy mother and a healthy child. But the countries around the world have been improving on maternal mortality rates, but covid-19 came and the numbers that we are seeing is other countries and also in Belize has put us back 10, 20 years or more, based on the maternal mortality rate. For Belize, 4-5 years before covid we had 10 maternal deaths per year, even 4 in 2020 and that was the first year of covid, but in 2021 we had 16 maternal deaths and in 2022 we had 4 maternal deaths and for 2023 have none documented so far. Out of those 16 that died in 2021, if we were to match the numbers according to when they occur, it matches perfectly with the Delta wave and then later on with the Omicron wave. So out of 16, 9 were due to covid-19."
