Down's Syndrome
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) foetuses, (b) infants and (c) children have been diagnosed with trisomy 21 in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The National Disease Registration Service in NHS England collects and quality assures data about people with congenital anomalies and rare diseases across the whole of England. The service does not hold data in the relevant form for children.
The following table shows the requested information for fetuses and infants between 2018 and 2021, the period for which complete data is available:
Birth year | Number of babies born alive | Number of babies stillborn | Number of terminations | Number of late miscarriages | Number of fetuses | Total number of babies and fetuses with T21 |
2018 | 731 | 31 | 803 | 12 | 815 | 1,577 |
2019 | 685 | 28 | 838 | 9 | 847 | 1,560 |
2020 | 673 | 35 | 839 | 16 | 855 | 1,563 |
2021 | 700 | 24 | 1,049 | 12 | 1,061 | 1,785 |
Source: NCARDRS Congenital Anomaly Official Statistics Report, 2021
Notes:
- Born alive means a baby showing signs of life at birth as recorded by the Office for National Statistics.
- Stillbirths are pregnancy outcomes after 24 complete weeks’ gestation which result in the baby's death by the time of birth.
- Terminations are terminations of pregnancy regardless of gestation or civil registration status. Some of the babies shown in this table may have more than one condition, so may not have had a termination for the condition shown.
- Late miscarriages are pregnancy outcomes between 20 and just under 24 weeks’ gestation which result in the death of the baby.
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