This is why we NEED 'Universal Healthcare' in the United States NO QUESTIONS ASKED. RIP to the 27 year old sista. Sad all around.
Lashonda Hazard was a healthy, 27-year-old expecting mother. She died on January 7 at her local hospital after complaining of severe stomach pain. Her unborn baby died, too. According to a barb viral Facebook post, Hazard felt she wasn’t being taken seriously by medical staff before dying.
Her last texts are utterly heartbreaking.
According to a GoFundMe page created by her best friend, Nicole Beasley, Hazard and her unborn child passed away “unexpectedly” at the Woman & Infant Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island due to “reasons unknown.”
A viral Facebook post, also appearing on the page for Pantsuit Nation, shows screenshots from the hours before Hazard’s death, where the mother-to-be verbalized the amount of severe pain she was in while in the hospital. She also made it clear she didn’t feel she was being taken seriously, or having her concerns addressed in a way that gave her answers or made her feel better.
Shortly after, she was dead.
“I’m literally dying.” No one, but especially not a pregnant mother, should be left feeling frustrated, scared, and bereft of answers while in a hospital. Black mothers and babies are especially vulnerable in situations like this in the U.S.
IMAGE VIA GOFUNDME
A national study conducted surrounding the five medical complications that are common causes of maternal death and injury showed that black women were two to three times more likely to die than white women who had the same condition.
In fact, the reason the maternal rate in the U.S. is so much higher than other affluent countries is directly related to the rate that black mothers die in our country versus white mothers. The World Health Organization estimates that black expectant and new mothers in the U.S. die at about the same rate as women in countries such as Mexico and Uzbekistan.
It kind of makes me scared to have a child now.
