ST Medical Monday: "Maternal Health Care Is Disappearing in Rural America"

"The disappearing maternal care problem is common across rural America. Only about 6 percent of the nation's OB/GYNs work in rural areas, according to the latest survey numbers from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Yet 15 percent of the country's population, or 46 million people, live in rural America. As a result, fewer than half of rural women live within a 30-minute drive of the nearest hospital offering obstetric services." So reports Dina Fine Maron in a recently posted online piece for Scientific American. Maron is our guest today on ST Medical Monday; she's an associate editor for medicine, biology, and health at Scientific American, and her reporting has also appeared in Newsweek, Time.com, The Boston Globe, and Science News. She tells us about her alarming and in-depth article, which also shows that maternal mortality is likewise significantly higher in America's rural areas -- as well as infant mortality rates.