RT Journal
T1 MAternity care in a rural community, pike county, mississippi, 1931-1936
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1939
FD April 15
VO 112
IS 15
SP 1530
OP 1530
DO 10.1001/jama.1939.02800150102028
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1939.02800150102028
AB This is part of a stock taking of a public health program established in Pike County, Miss., in 1931 with the assistance of the Commonwealth Fund. Attention is focused on maternal mortality, which was 5.3 and 9.4 per thousand live births for white persons and Negroes respectively. "In regard to the Negro maternal deaths, it seems likely that the relatively poor economic conditions under which the patients lived caused a lowered resistance and greater tendency to develop some of the common conditions causing death, such as infection and toxemia." While, on the basis of an analysis which it is stated should be clearly understood as "in part speculative," it was determined that a certain percentage of the maternal deaths were due to "neglect and failure to obtain medical care on the part of the patient or midwife, and possibly ill advised interference on the part of the physician,... nearly half