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Thursday Jul 10
Some NHS trusts in England need to do more to make maternity services safer and improve choices for mothers, the Healthcare Commission has said.
A survey of 150 trusts by the watchdog found low staffing levels and poor facilities in some hospitals. Midwives said ministers would struggle to meet a promise to allow every mother to choose where she gave birth by 2009.
The government said it was providing £330m, recruiting 4,000 midwives by 2012 and was "listening" to mothers.
The 2007 provisional figure showed that there were an average of 1.91 children per woman in England and Wales - the highest since 1973, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The figure rose from 1.86 the year - the sixth consecutive increase.
The period since 2001 has also coincided with an increasing birth rate.
The Healthcare Commission report was commissioned after a series of separate investigations into deaths at maternity hospitals revealed similar problems. The survey looked at services from the start of pregnancy through to postnatal care. The report revealed some trusts had as few as two beds available per 1,000 births, meaning that each bed was used, on average, by more than one woman in 24 hours.
The report found that some hospitals were far worse staffed than others, with a ratio of fewer than 23 midwives per 1,000 births, compared with 40 per 1,000 in the most generously staffed units. In the patient survey, 89% of women said they had been happy with their experience during pregnancy and birth.
However, while the majority of women were being offered some degree of choice, such as a midwife-led unit, or a home birth, it said two-thirds of trusts could currently offer only a consultant-led service in its hospitals.
Labour pledged in its 1995 manifesto that by 2009 all women would have a choice of birth location, and restated this in its Maternity Matters document published last year.
Healthcare Commission chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said many hospitals had made improvements already as a result of the review but problems remained.
The commission's chief executive Anna Walker told BBC News that if it was thought a unit was not safe it would be closed down.
The government's national clinical director for children, young people and maternity services, Sheila Shribman, welcomed the report.
She said: "The UK is one of the safest places in the world to have a baby and the report does acknowledge that women have a positive experience.
"But there is more to do ensure people do have the choice and the experience that they want."
The Department of Health's chief nursing officer Christine Beasley said: "Women tell us they want more choice in their
maternity care, including how and where they give birth, and we are listening."
However, Dame Karlene Davis, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives, said maternity services still did not appear to be a priority, and there was no evidence to suggest that the midwife target or choice for mothers would be met.
Article from BBC News
10th July 2008
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