Our faculty Dr Scott Harvey is working with the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health and Hawaiʻi lawmakers to reduce the number of women dying in Hawaiʻi during childbirth. Mothers in Hawaiʻi — like the United States as a whole — are dying of pregnancy-related complications, or maternal mortality, at higher rates than in any other developed country.
In the past three decades, nations like Germany and Japan have significantly decreased maternal deaths while in the U.S. the situation has worsened by 300 percent. In Hawaiʻi, maternal deaths account for five to 15 fatalities every year.
“The unfortunate thing is a lot of the maternal deaths that we’ve seen have had either a very minimal or no prenatal care. Some (people) didn’t even know they were pregnant,” said Dr. Harvey.
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