Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    SHENZHEN’S rate of women who die from pregnancy over the past 12 months remained low compared with the national average, although it still rose slightly from a year ago, the city’s health commission said late Thursday, debunking previous media reports that the “two-child” policy has led to a huge increase in the rate.

    Maternal death is defined by the World Health Organization as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes.”

    About 385,000 pregnant women have medical records with Shenzhen hospitals between Oct. 1, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2016, and 19 of them, or 8.97 in every 100,000, died during that period, the city’s health commission said quoting official figures.

    The rate is higher than the 6.18/100,000 last year, but lower than the 11.22/100,000 in 2014. “The maternal death rate hasn’t exceeded the average rate of the past five years and remained within a normal range,” the health commission said in a statement released late Thursday.

    Nationwide, the rate of maternal death was 18.3/100,000 in the first six months of this year, up 30.6 percent from a year ago, but at almost the same level as 2014.

    The commission found that the proportion of high-risk pregnant women, including women of advanced maternal age and women with uterine scars, has risen markedly in Shenzhen since China implemented the two-child policy Jan. 1.