Childbirth and Infant Mortality
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 December 2024 to Question 15960 on Neonatal Inequalities, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of (a) monitoring and (b) reporting on (i) pre-term births and (ii) neonatal brain injuries by (A) ethnicity and (B) deprivation.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The Government is committed to ensuring that all women and babies received safe, personalised, equitable, and compassionate care. I am urgently considering the immediate action needed across maternity and neonatal services to improve outcomes and address the stark inequalities that persist for women and babies across ethnicity and deprivation.
The Department’s officials work closely with NHS England and maternity and neonatal sector partners to monitor inequalities in perinatal outcomes by ethnicity and deprivation, including through the published Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK reports. The Office of National Statistics’ report on preterm birth by ethnicity and the recent Imperial College London Brain Injury Surveillance Reports include breakdowns by ethnicity and deprivation. There are no current plans to make a further specific assessment of the merits of monitoring and reporting on pre-term births and neonatal brain injuries by ethnicity and deprivation.
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