Tori Bowie died from complications in childbirth

[minsmum]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/65887510 she was only 32

It's not necessarily that she wasn't missed though- someone (or more than one) contacted the police because they hadn't heard for a few days. It could be: day 1 - that's odd haven't heard from X
Day 2 - still haven't heard. Leave message saying I'm worried get in touch
Day 3- still haven't heard. Feel worried and think about contacting police

This is a terrible and very sad story...

With regards to pre-eclampsia, from my own experience it can turn into a crisis terrifyingly fast.

In the last two months of my pregnancy I had repeated UTIs, massive water retention etc but because I have low blood pressure it was registered as "normal" and that was why it was missed. At 35 weeks I started projectile vomiting and insisted on going to hospital as I just knew instinctively something was wrong. My partner and family thought I was over-reacting as recent medical assessments had said everything was fine. I was induced within 24 hours and was told it was 50 / 50 survival chance for me and my DS. Never been so terrified in my life. We were extremely lucky.

I'm white and also a negative blood group which is associated with low blood pressure - my Mum was the same.

It sounds as though this terrible tragedy probably has many factors involved and it baffles me how these things can happen in such an allegedly advanced civilisation. Or rather I should say it angers and frustrates me because often it is because women are dismissed as over-reacting when raising concerns.

Obviously we don't know exactly what has gone on here, but I really hope it hasn't happened because a doctor thought they knew better at some point....

Obviously we don't know exactly what has gone on here, but I really hope it hasn't happened because a doctor thought they knew better at some point.... or because having been a black woman her whole life she didn’t feel like she could go to the hospital for a niggle here and a niggle there- that there was no point to doing this because you’d just be told to stop wasting peoples time and go home

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.

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.

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/

Interestingly, it says "woman" now.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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'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?

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.

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.

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.

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. 😭