Maternity Scandals Spark Safety Review

Experts will evaluate the safety of maternity services across the NHS to reduce harm to babies.

They hope to establish the best ways of recognising warning signs of babies in distress so doctors can intervene sooner.

It follows a string of high profile scandals in which mothers and babies have died or been left with severe disabilities.

The Department of Health will give £2 million to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to begin the first stage of the study.

It will examine the best methods for monitoring and reacting to a baby’s well-being during labour and develop national guidelines on when a caesarean is needed.

The review, which is expected to be completed before the close of the year, will seek the views of healthcare workers and parents on how care could be improved.

A further £449,000 will go towards developing a workforce planning tool that will help maternity services to determine safe staffing levels.

The Avoiding Brain injuries in Childbirth (ABC) Collaboration will include the Royal College of Midwives and the University of Cambridge.

Maternity safety minister Nadine Dorries said that she was determined to make sure as many mums as possible could go home with healthy and happy babies in their arms.

She said that this new programme aims to detect warning signs beforehand and save lives, preventing families and their babies from suffering the horrific ordeal of a life-changing brain injury, and would help them deliver on their ambition to halve brain injuries during birth by 2025.

She said that having the best maternity staff in the right place at the right time meant that they could learn from one another, give the best care for mums and babies and build a safe and positive environment for both staff and pregnant women in maternity units across the country.

Maternity negligence claims account for more than half of all damages paid by the NHS. A single case of brain damage can cost millions in compensation.

The Government’s maternity safety objective is to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirth, neonatal, maternal death and brain injuries that happen during or shortly after birth by 2025.

Dr Edward Morris, president of RCOG, said that they realise that the impact of avoidable newborn brain injury is profound and they want to do everything they can to ensure no family has to experience it.

Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, chief midwifery officer for England, said that giving safe and efficient care to babies and their mothers is a fundamental priority for the NHS.

But who would trust the NHS after all the distortions that have been told around COVID, and the absence of informed consent and the administration against the old and most vulnerable, not to mention the silencing or sacking of some health professionals who dared to challenge the narrative.

So, it doesn’t seem like their care is paramount, except if there’s a great fat contract in it for them, and the NHS has shown what it’s all about in the last 18 months and it’s not good.

Although labour midwives are pretty marvellous most of the time, and they usually monitor constantly, and they’re the ones that pick up the many concerns surrounding the birth, during and after, and it’s usually the consultants and registrars who they report everything to, but some consultants appear to mismanage the birth and delay intervention, which means that numerous babies suffer massive brain trauma because of lack of too much oxygen, and it only takes one God complex.