The world of death certificates is field with complexities.

Determining the cause of death is not always straightforward.

But how can this impact the way we view health statistics? is not always straightforward.

But how can this impact the way we view health statistics in the United States?

It's Wednesday, August 28th, and this is Science Friday.

I'm Cyfry Radio Fellow Valeria Diaz.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,

the maternal mortality rate in the United States is very high compared to other

wealthy countries, about 22.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 life births.

This is on par with China and Iran based on UNICEF data.

So why is the U.S maternal mortality rate so high?

It may have to do with how we fill out debt certificates.

A study from earlier this year found that misfiling of information in debt

certificates may be inflating the numbers. Here's Cyfry guess host Maggie

Kurth with more. Earlier this summer, researchers uncovered evidence that suggesting that high death rate is just a trick of recordkeeping.

You know, people who fill out death certificates can check a box showing whether the person who died was pregnant, and all those deaths are counted as maternal

mortal mortal. But the study found that the actual cause of death in those cases isn't always pregnancy related.

With only pregnancy related statistics counted the study found that U.S. maternal mortality falls by half, down to 10.4 per 100,000 people, which brings us

back into line with countries like Canada and the United Kingdom. And this brings us to an interesting and complicated problem.

Data collected on death certificates

is a crucial part of how we track public health,

but that data does not always cleanly represent reality.

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