The National Maternity Review has today published its recommendations for how services should change over the next five years.

To read the report and the recommendations please click here.  

Judith Abela, Acting Chief Executive of Sands, said: “We welcome this report as a positive step forward in putting safety first when it comes to maternity care. England - and the UK as a whole - has an unacceptably high rate of stillbirth and neonatal death and progress in reducing the number of stillbirths in particular is too slow. Any fall in infant mortality in the last ten years has been largely due to improvements in caring for babies born too sick or too early; reduction in the UK’s stillbirth rate over a similar period, as reported by The Lancet’s latest stillbirth series, is moving four times slower than some of our European neighbours.

“The report adds to the wealth of evidence already in existence that much more can be done to reduce inequalities in maternity care for all pregnant women and their families. It is essential that safety is at the heart of innovation and improvements in maternity care and that when things do go wrong, thorough, family-focused, high quality investigations take place to identify and learn from mistakes. It’s also vital that good quality bereavement care is available in every unit; the care parents receive after the tragedy of their baby’s death can have a significant impact on their long term wellbeing.”