Contaminated feed inquest conclusions highlight concerns over lack of requirement for providers to report problems
More babies in England could die from issues caused by unlicensed medicines if providers are not required to report problems, a coroner has warned.
The conclusions were reached at the end of an inquest held after three infants died due to receiving contaminated feed.
Continue reading...Admission by doctor at Guy’s and St Thomas’ made during inquest into deaths of three babies infected
An NHS trust that gave four newborn babies contaminated feed has admitted that it was operating “an entirely unsafe system” at the time they became infected.
The admission came during evidence by a senior doctor at Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust (GSTT), who led its investigation into the outbreak, during an inquest into how one of the very premature babies died.
Continue reading...Ryan Park pledges to fast-track a number of initiatives, including to improve access to continuity of care and ensure informed consent
The New South Wales health minister, Ryan Park, has apologised to women who were failed by the maternity care they received, as the government supported all 43 recommendations from a state inquiry into birth trauma.
Thousands of women shared harrowing details with the inquiry, which was established in 2023 to understand experiences of childbirth that lead to physical or psychological harm.
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Continue reading...England’s patient safety commissioner says NHS patients raising concerns are dismissed as ‘difficult women’
England’s patient safety commissioner, Henrietta Hughes, has warned that NHS patients raising concerns are too often “gaslighted”, “fobbed off” or dismissed as “difficult women”.
“It shows a very dismissive and very old fashioned, patronising attitude to patients who have identified problems and need to have their voices heard,” she said.
Continue reading...With many NHS maternity services struggling and a shortage of midwives, MPs’ plan for overhaul is ambitious
That the findings of the UK’s first inquiry into birth trauma are far from surprising does not diminish the fact that they are shocking, devastating and difficult – indeed distressing – to read. The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for birth trauma’s 80-page report should give ministers, NHS bosses and the midwives and obstetricians who deliver care serious pause for thought.
It highlights how “mistakes and failures” by maternity staff lead to stillbirths, premature births, babies being born with cerebral palsy because they were starved of oxygen at birth, and “life-changing injuries to women as the result of severe tearing”. How some mothers were mocked, shouted at, denied pain relief, not told what was going on during their labour, left alone in blood-stained sheets, with desperate bell calls for help going unanswered – all examples of “care that lacked compassion”. And how, in some cases, “these errors were covered up by hospitals who frustrated parents’ efforts to find answers”. It amounts to a shameful catalogue of negligence in the only area of NHS care where two lives – one still unborn – are on the line.
Continue reading...Ambulance Victoria says woman and baby taken to hospital after incident in town of Ocean Grove
A newborn baby is in a critical condition in hospital after being delivered in an apparent “freebirth” in regional Victoria.
The medical industry has expressed concern about the practice, which is typically characterised as a birth without help from a healthcare professional.
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Continue reading...Pioneering operation could allow dozens of infertile women a year to have babies
Surgeons have performed the first womb transplant on a woman in the UK, opening up the possibility for dozens of infertile women to have babies every year. The woman’s sister was the living donor of the womb.
The 34-year-old was “incredibly happy” and “over the moon” with the success of the nine-hour operation, according to the medical team behind the pioneering procedure. She now plans to have two children using IVF.
Continue reading...Participants in charity’s year-long inquiry describe being ignored and feeling patronised and dehumanised
Systemic racism within UK maternity care is risking the safety of people from Black, Asian and mixed ethnicity backgrounds, often with devastating consequences, according to a report by the childbirth charity Birthrights.
More than 300 people with lived and professional experience of racial injustice in a maternity setting gave evidence to an expert panel chaired by Shaheen Rahman QC, a barrister who specialises in clinical negligence, as part of the charity’s year-long inquiry into the issue.
Continue reading...Watchdog expresses concern over safety of mothers and babies days after damning Shrewsbury report
Hospital inspectors have uncovered repeated maternity failings and expressed serious concern about the safety of mothers and babies in Sheffield just days after a damning report warned there had been hundreds of avoidable baby deaths in Shrewsbury.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found Sheffield teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust, one of the largest NHS trusts in England, had failed to make the required improvements to services when it visited in October and November, despite receiving previous warnings from the watchdog.
Continue reading...Five-year investigation to conclude mothers forced to suffer traumatic births because of targets for ‘normal’ births
Three hundred babies died or were left brain-damaged due to inadequate care at an NHS trust, according to reports.
The Sunday Times has reported that a five-year investigation will conclude next week that mothers were denied caesarean sections and forced to suffer traumatic births due to an alleged preoccupation with hitting “normal” birth targets.
The inquiry, which analysed the experiences of 1,500 families at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust between 2000 and 2019, found that at least 12 mothers died while giving birth, and some families lost more than one child in separate incidents, the newspaper reported.
Donna Ockenden, an expert midwife who led the inquiry with the input of more than 90 midwives and doctors, said her team had been “shocked and saddened” by the scale of the tragedy.
The Ockenden report is expected to reveal that hundreds of babies were stillborn, died shortly after birth or were left permanently brain-damaged while many had fractured skulls or broken bones, or were left with life-changing disabilities.
Continue reading...The state’s two publicly funded home-birth programs are suspended, with some expectant mothers not told until weeks before due dates
Expectant mothers are having planned home births cancelled within weeks of their due dates, with Victoria’s ambulance crisis putting intense strain on the state’s maternity services.
Victoria has just two publicly funded home-birth programs at Sunshine and Casey hospitals – both of which are now temporarily suspended. Assisted home births require ambulances to be available in case of any complications during the procedure.
Continue reading...More babies are born by C-section than ever, causing alarm at the WHO. But some believe the option should always be offered. So what are the risks and benefits?
When Elizabeth Chloe Romanis first considered the ethics of chosen caesarean sections, she was listening to a radio programme her husband had sent her. The programme was about how some NHS trusts refused to give medically unnecessary C-sections to people who wanted them. “He sent it to me like: ‘Have you heard this?’ and obviously I got very annoyed,” says the biolaw researcher at Durham University.
Someone phoned in and asked, why should the NHS offer the choice when childbirth is natural and surgery costs money? Irritated, Romanis thought someone from her field ought to argue for the right to choose. “So that’s what I did,” she says.
Continue reading...Alexis Huguet’s image of this twin girl, born as her mother fled into Congo, captures the fragility of life in the Central African Republic
The picture is a joyful one. Laure, a midwife at a health facility in Ndu, a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, holds a healthy newborn girl. The baby’s mother, Ester, was at the health centre for a postnatal appointment after giving birth to twin daughters.
A couple of weeks earlier, when she was heavily pregnant and due to go into labour at any moment, Ester was forced to leave her home in Bangassou, on the other side of a river, in the neighbouring Central African Republic.
Continue reading...Patients travelling long distances to find surgery cancelled as lack of anaesthetics shuts operating theatres in half of hospitals
Almost half of Malawi’s district hospitals have closed their operating theatres due to a dire shortage of anaesthetics.
Maternity care has been affected by a lack of drugs, said doctors. Surgery, including caesareans, has been cancelled and patients needing emergency care have been moved hundreds of miles around the country.
Continue reading...Zahra Mirzaei pioneered ‘groundbreaking’ maternity services in Kabul, but has been forced to flee. She says she won’t stop fighting for dignified care for Afghanistan’s women and girls
When Afghanistan’s first midwife-led birth centre opened in the impoverished district of Dasht-e-Barchi in western Kabul this year it was a symbol of hope and defiance.
It began receiving expectant mothers in June, just over a year after a devastating attack by gunmen on the maternity wing at the local hospital left 24 people dead, including 16 mothers, a midwife and two young children.
Continue reading...Women who turn down advice from health service staff say they are being coerced with threats of referrals to agencies and police
Pregnant women and new mothers are being referred to social services by midwives for refusing to follow their advice, patient advocacy groups have warned.
Expectant parents who have declined care, including opting out of scans, refusing inductions or failing to attend antenatal appointments, are among those who have faced threats from healthcare professionals amounting to coercion, according to the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (Aims).
Continue reading...Social Market Foundation suggests measures including better childcare provision to increase birthrate
Britain is facing a “baby shortage” that could lead to “long-term economic stagnation”, a thinktank has said.
The Social Market Foundation (SMF) said the birthrate was almost half what it was at its postwar peak in the 1960s, and the country’s ageing population could lead to economic decline.
Continue reading...The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse
Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.
Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”
Continue reading...After seeing a woman die in childbirth, Liyatu Ayuba stepped in and has now delivered 118 babies in a community cut off from public health services
Having watched a woman and her baby die needlessly after being refused admission to a hospital over a lack of money, Liyatu Ayuba wanted to never let it happen again.
The 62-year-old is one of Nigeria’s nearly 3 million internally displaced people (IDPs) – driven out of their homes by the violence of the Boko Haram Islamist militants. Ayuba fled Gwoza in the north-eastern state of Borno in 2011 with her family. After her husband was killed by Boko Haram and her teenage son badly wounded, she went to the makeshift Durumi 1 IDP camp, in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, where about 500 families live.
Continue reading...When she was pregnant, Anna Malaika Tubbs was thrilled – then terrified, knowing the shockingly high death rate of Black women in childbirth. Could she find a way to stay safe?
In the bathroom of a friend’s house in Washington DC, I waited anxiously for a few minutes before turning to look at the pregnancy test. It was positive. My eyes filled with tears; I was overjoyed, grateful and excited, but also very scared.
I think many parents can relate to this feeling, which seems to start as soon as we see that test result, and continues until our children are adults; we are overwhelmed with happiness for their mere existence while simultaneously terrified of the possibility of losing them. But as a Black feminist scholar, I was well aware that I had even more reason to worry.
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