In a tragic and alarming trend, another woman of color has died during childbirth at Woodhull Hospital in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Bevorlin Garcia Barrios, 24, passed away on Sept. 15, 2024, after an emergency C-section.
Her death marks the third maternal fatality involving a woman of color at the hospital since 2020, sparking fresh outrage and raising serious concerns about maternal health care, particularly for women of color.
Barrios’ boyfriend, Nelson Ramirez, explained that she went to the hospital after feeling unwell, only to never return. Doctors informed him that she died during the procedure, but he still has no clarity on what went wrong.
“I done crying at this point. I want something to be solved,” he expressed, echoing the frustration and grief felt by many affected families.
This tragic case follows the deaths of Christine Fields, 30, in November 2023, and Sha-Asia Washington, 26, in 2020, both of whom also died following C-sections at Woodhull Hospital.
The surviving family members, including Fields’ boyfriend, Jose Perez, have called for change, demanding accountability and improvements in maternal care.
“We can’t keep having this,” Perez said, stressing the urgency for action.
Despite the ongoing tragedies, New York City Health and Hospitals, which operates Woodhull, has remained tight-lipped about these deaths due to patient privacy laws.
While they’ve made efforts to hire new leadership for the OBGYN and anesthesia departments and implement staff training, families and advocates argue that these steps are insufficient in addressing the systemic issues contributing to the maternal mortality rates, particularly for Black and Latina women.
The U.S. maternal mortality rate, especially for women of color, has been a persistent problem, with Black women dying at three to four times the rate of white women during childbirth.
For many, the death of Barrios, and the women before her, is evidence of the racial disparities in healthcare and the dire need for reform.
