Pregnant Woman’s Roadside Death Triggers Push To Reopen Mississippi Delta Hospital

KFF Health News reports on Belzoni, Mississippi, a Delta town where the closure of the county hospital thirteen years ago has left Humphreys County with no emergency room, no urgent care clinic, and no county health department. In twenty twenty-one, Harmony Ball-Stribling suffered complications from preeclampsia four days before her scheduled cesarean section, and died alongside her unborn daughter on the roadside as her husband drove toward the nearest hospital, twenty-five miles away. Her death has galvanized state and local leaders, including a state representative who is her aunt and a county board president who once worked as an EMT at the shuttered hospital. The county has lost a fourth of its population since the closure and has one of Mississippi's highest infant mortality rates, at roughly fifteen deaths for every one thousand births. Congressman Bennie Thompson secured about one million dollars in late twenty twenty-five to expand services at a local health center, though policy experts warn that once a rural community loses a hospital, bringing one back is nearly impossible.

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