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British maternity wards in crisis

… Is it any wonder that we have headlines like this one:

British maternity wards in crisis - Health News, Health & Families - The Independent.

 

* Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries (CMACE). Saving Mothers’ Lives: reviewing maternal deaths to make motherhood safer: 2006–08. The Eighth Report on Con?dential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths in the United Kingdom. BJOG …

No.10 has responded to our petition. Or has it?

The Number 10 e-Petitions website has responded to the Maternal Health petition. Or has it?

The response considerately quotes paragraphs from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guideline Routine postnatal care of women and their babies (2006) which sets out what should happen.

It then quotes the Saving Mothers’ Lives report …

Maternal deaths are an outrage

… "We must find a way to get maternal mortality recognized as a key indicator of a functioning health system. Let us work together to make sure maternal mortality is a problem of the past and not our children's future."

Sarah Brown ( Reuters 19 May)

The justifiable outrage that pregnancy and childbirth continue to kill 529,000 women and leave 1 million children motherless worldwide …

What is the point of twittering anyway?

… on messages and information about the Jessica's Trust campaign – often tagged with the #maternalhealth hashtag – and some of them are adept at bringing the cause to celebrity attention.

With some success:

In April Jonathan Ross (Wossy - an extremely popular twitterer) and his wife Jane Goldman (FerretPrincess) both signed and alerted their followers, saying respectively

wossy: I …

Look at the bigger picture

… then please sign our petition, if you haven't already.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/maternalhealth/

MEOWS: Recommended

… As for being a lone voice - this is what the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH) said in it's top 10 recommendations to save mothers' lives in it's 2007 report, using prevention of deaths from sepsis as an example:

Early warning scoring system

9. There is an urgent need for the routine use of a national obstetric early warning chart, similar to those in …

'Midwife numbers to fall short'

With a weariness I read today yet another story about midwifery staffing levels falling short of the number required  for the government to meet it's own declared standard of care.

BBC: Midwife numbers 'to fall short'

I've said it before, and I expect I'll say it again; please look after …

Mrs Brown gives away a free plug

… Sarah Brown had joined Twitter. As well as being Mrs G. Brown, she is a strong advocate of women's health in the developing world. Knowing this, I 'followed' her (on Twitter this is a very non-stalking thing to do) and sent her a link to this website. She thanked me back, and I thought nothing of it until today.

I have just been sent a link to a story in the Technology pages of the Telegraph: …

Life saving treatment wanted asap

… is this. Purely looking at sepsis, in 2003-2005 the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health recorded 18 deaths (0.85 per 100,000) from Genital tract sepsis (GTS). This would be 4.25 per 500,000, but more women than that give birth in this country each year. The average number of deaths per annum from GTS/CF is 6.

Far, far more are affected (no data is recorded, but it should be) …

Rising GAS

Group A Streptococcal infections are on the increase, according the the Health Protection Agency. The concern so far has been largely in cases of Scarlet Fever, which last December reached a 10 year high, the HPA reported.

The news is that there is now an enhanced surveillance protocol of severe group A streptococcal disease. Not quite the study of cases of …