Tori Bowie died from complications in childbirth

Yes, I have a friend who's had the same issue to mine. A musculoskeletal thing, painful but not life threatening

The NHS basically told me there was nothing to be done, time, rest, a few stretches.

She has had multiple operations, £1000s spent on physical therapies and steroid injections courtesy of her private medical insurance.

Three years on I am fully recovered and she can hardly walk 😥

Too much treatment can be as dangerous as too little. It has been estimated that the US healthcare system kills as many people through over-treatment as under-treatment, thinking of the population in general. In this particular case, it sounds as if she may have made choices that resulted in under-treatment-so very sad.

I read this sad news yesterday. Sadly, it sounds as if she may may have had an eating disorder, bipolar and hadn’t been attending medical appointments. She didn’t want to have the baby in a hospital either . Her agent said that she was concerned about her but “As an adult you make your own decisions.”

It’s a tragedy, but it doesn’t sound as if race was the major factor in THIS particular case as it is in many others. I wonder where the baby’s father and her family were?

This is so depressing and I know sometime similar happening to an old colleague’s friend. She was also a black woman. The statistics don’t lie. 😭

In this case it appears that she avoided antenatal care and thought she was at bigger risk from doctors. Combine that with MH issues and it's dangerous. It's rightly difficult to force a woman to get medical care.

It doesn't seem to be that doctors failed to diagnose her, it's that her fear of the medical system (a combination of fear of racism and mental illness) led her to avoid medical care and so she went undiagnosed.

It's all terrible, but my experience of private medicine is they'll give you more treatment than you need, not less, if you're paying for it. I wondered why an affluent or well insured woman in a private system wouldn't get "just in case" treatment.

Why would black women still struggle to get the care they need?

Because despite research and high profile stories, eg Serena Williams, medical practitioners refuse to recognise that Black women may be prone to certain conditions when pregnant. And from research carried out the medical practitioners fail to listen when Black women try to alert those who should be caring for them that something is wrong.

I've heard about black women receiving inferior care in the NHS, but this happened in US and presumably she would have had the insurance/means to pay for whatever care she needed? Why would black women still struggle to get the care they need?

As she hadn’t been to antenatal appointments

I know the health care system in the US is different, but wouldn't that have been a cause for concern. ie shouldn't a welfare check have been made to find out why she hadn't attended.

Whatever happened, this is still a tragedy. And also must have had an impact on family and friends who are probably all thinking "if only I had done ..." or had assumed that someone else was in touch with her.

I am white and a lazy git who has never ran in her entire life and had pre eclampsia. They caught it early enough and had me in 'blood pressure clinic' for a week before deciding to keep me in and induce me.

BBC Sport reporting that of the 4 women who won Gold in the 4x100m relay at the 2016 Olympics (of which Tori Bowie was one), 3 experienced serious problems in pregnancy/labour, resulting in the death of Tori.

There was more to it than just her being black, though. If she had mental health problems, who knows how much, if at all, race came into it.
Which of course is not to say that Allyson Felix isn't 100% right to call for changes.

I thought that she probably failed to take her meds for bi polar, lost touch with reality and just told no medical professionals about the pregnancy. Whether she was scared the baby would be taken into care, I don't know, but I do wonder why family and friends didn't raise any concerns well before the tragedy.

I read that, it’s so sad. I read elsewhere she was 5’9 so at 96lbs she would have been severely underweight, skeletal with a bump. Her manager/friend spoke about telling her to eat. As she hadn’t been to antenatal appointments there may have been no doctors involved with her pregnancy at all.

BBC Sport reporting that of the 4 women who won Gold in the 4x100m relay at the 2016 Olympics (of which Tori Bowie was one), 3 experienced serious problems in pregnancy/labour, resulting in the death of Tori.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/65925398

According to an article in the Daily Fail today, she had bi polar disorder, hadn't been attending ante natal appointments, wasn't eating and weighed 96 pounds when she died. It seems that friends /relatives urged her to get help but she refused. So sad, but I think there might be a huge amount more to this story.

This is so awful and it’s the same in the UK too. Take a look at the fivexmore campaign

https://www.fivexmore.com/

they say that black women in the UK are 4 times more likely to die in childbirth

This is so sad. I hope something changes because of this, so her death wasn't in vain.

The only woman I've ever known to die in childbirth in the UK was also black.

Statistically, in the USA race is a bigger factor than poverty. They've looked into that.

Unfortunately at this point there's too many unanswered questions to give firm conclusions about Bowie's death. Did her doctors miss the signs of preeclampsia/eclampsia? Was the onset very sudden? We don't know. It seems she went into labour, and no friends or family were there. It's really tragic.

This is a shocking graph, showing that maternal mortality rates are getting WORSE in the US for all women. How much of the rise across 2020/2021 can be put down to Covid (in terms of lack of access to maternity care) I don’t know but I suspect it will be a factor.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2021/maternal-mortality-rates-2021.htm

Unfortunately poverty in the USA is the main reason for poor outcomes, because whilst you can access free maternity care in theory if you are poor. there's so many hurdles plus stigma many do not until later in pregnancy. The race issue I'm not sure whether it's partly to do with poverty, partly due to mistrust of medical professionals, higher risk occupations, poor housing etc a combination I suspect but it's scandalous whatever

Interestingly, it says "woman" now.

There are probably others, but here are some groups working to improve health care for Black women during pregnancy and childbirth.

https://www.blackmumsupfront.com/

https://www.fivexmore.com/

https://themotherhoodgroup.org/

I too had wondered about her being on her own, especially after news papers started reporting that her death was being recorded as "natural" due to complications in childbirth. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/13/sport/tori-bowie-sprinter-childbirth-death-spt/index.html

This is just so sad and unnecessary.

I found getting adequate maternity care difficult enough as an educated middle class white woman. Well, any medical care tbh.

And the only friend I lost to childbirth was a black woman - such a scandal of inadequate care and dismissal of mother’s concerns.