Naomi Masheti: Race and ethnicity shouldn’t matter in maternity care. But they do

A HSE internal review on the death of Nayyab Tariq found there were systems of care/service issues which may have contributed to her death, that 'skin pallor was initially less obvious due to ethnicity'

Nayyab Tariq: A loving, fun-loving, and accomplished academic and gifted biopharmacist.

Race and ethnicity should not matter in maternity care. However, findings of a systematic review of migrant women experiences of pregnancy and childbirth across Europe indicate that they are at risk of poorer pregnancy outcomes (Fair et al. 2020).

A confidential inquiry into maternal deaths, published in 2020 in the UK, found that while the maternal mortality rate is quite low in general, there remains a more than fourfold difference in maternal mortality rates among women from black ethnic backgrounds and an almost twofold difference among women from Asian ethnic backgrounds compared to white women, emphasising the need for a continued focus on action to address these disparities.