Earlier this year Grazia and Sands joined forces and launched the `Stop the stillbirth scandal campaign’. A key element of the campaign has been a petition asking the government to fund research to discover what is causing 11 babies every day in the UK to die, and to develop new ways of screening pregnancies to find out which babies are at risk of stillbirth… and save their lives before it is too late.

An amazing, 22,652 of you signed the petition, and we are hugely grateful to each and every one of you, thank you!

We presented the petition with Grazia, to Public Health Minister, Anne Milton on the steps of 10 Downing Street earlier this month. Dr Daniel Poulter MP, Chair of the All Party Group on Maternity and Health Select Committee member also attended the presentation in support of the campaign.

We are now compiling an official letter to the Department of Health outlining our petition calls. We’ll keep you updated on their response as soon as we have it.

The petition has now closed, but if you are interested in contacting your local MP or parliamentarian, and want to be kept up to date with the issues we wish to raise, then why not join our Sands Campaigning Voices group?

We are also organising a, parliamentary reception in the Terrace Pavilion, House of Commons, Westminster on Wednesday 30 November 2011, where we will be launching our new report:  Preventing Babies’ Deaths: What Needs To Be Done. We would love as many of our supporters as possible to contact their local MP to highlight the upcoming report and the date of the parliamentary reception and to arrange to meet them personally at the reception. If you’d like to get involved then please join the Sands Campaigning Voices group to receive template letters to send to your MP and other useful resources.

Thank you!