When Charles Johnson’s wife, Kira, died after bleeding internally for more than 10 hours following a routine C-section in April 2016, he assumed his situation was an anomaly. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
“I thought it was a freak occurrence. Here was a woman who was in exceptional health in 2016 in the United States at Cedars-Sinai of all places,” he shared at Fortune’s Brainstorm Health conference in Marina del Rey, Calif. Wednesday afternoon following a panel about the Black maternal mortality crisis. “But the more I started hearing about these horrific birthing experiences and women that have made the ultimate sacrifice, the more I started thinking something’s just not right.”
