600 stillbirths a year ‘are preventable’

POOR care in NHS maternity units could be causing 600 preventable stillbirths a year, an official report suggests.

A major project to improve services at 19 English hospitals led to stillbirth rates falling by a fifth, NHS England said. Simple changes were made, such as better monitoring of babies during labour and of those growing too slowly in the womb.

The assessment, led by experts at Manchester University, found 161 babies were saved in the two years after the improvements were made. The changes are to be rolled out nationally and it is estimated they could save 600 babies a year.

Despite stillbirths falling to their lowest rate in 20 years, there are around 3,000 a year, or one in every 200 babies. In a league table of progress on the issue in 2016, the UK was a shocking 114th out of 164 countries.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘We still have more to do but these results demonstrate really positive progress towards our ambition to halve the rates of stillbirth, neonatal death and maternal death by 2025.’