IN GOOD ‘It’s heartbreaking that you fare worse if you are a non-white woman. It’s obscene’
In the UK, black women are more than four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women. Presenter Rochelle Humes wants to know when the issue is going to be taken seriously
Presenter Rochelle Humes is recalling her three pregnancies. “There are definitely times when you think, ‘I hope everything is going to be all right’ – but not at any point should you think, ‘Am I going to make it through this because of my race?’”
The 32-year-old This Morning presenter has two daughters Alaia-mai, seven, and Valentina, four, and son
Blake, five months, with husband
Marvin. But it wasn’t until early last year, shortly before her third pregnancy, that she first became aware of the shocking statistics concerning skin colour and maternal death.
“Being mixed race in the UK means
I’m three more times likely to die during pregnancy and up to six weeks after birth, but black women fare even worse and are more than four times more likely to suffer a maternal death,” she says. “Asian women also die at higher rates. Those numbers don’t lie and seeing them on paper was really alarming.”
Now Rochelle is fronting The Black Maternity Scandal, an investigation for Channel 4’s Dispatches, examining these statistics and talking to expectant mums and bereaved families.
“I was really shocked to discover there are weird old wives’ tales that are still believed – that black women don’t feel pain the way a white woman does. I think the thing that upset me the most is that we spend so much time telling people to speak up but when they do they aren’t believed.
“That’s something we need to do better as a society – if a woman says she’s in pain, she is in pain, no matter what race she is.”
During filming, Rochelle met women who have survived “near misses”. Because as she soon learned, maternal deaths only tell part of the story. For every woman who dies, around 100 more suffer a serious or lifethreatening complication during pregnancy, childbirth or shortly after.
While there is no data collected on this
If a woman says she’s in pain, she is in pain, no matter what race she is
currently – the excuse being that a “near miss” is hard to define – one study found that compared to white European women, black African women are around 83 per cent more likely more likely to suffer a near miss in the UK.
During filming, Rochelle met Jade Ajao, mum to Maya, three, and 21-month-old twins Kayla and Karis. Initially, Jade’s elective caesarean appeared to have gone smoothly.
“The twins came out crying and fine, and I went to recovery,” she recalls. “From there it becomes a daze. I only remember asking for morphine and food. My husband raised the alarm a couple of times saying ‘my wife isn’t really responding to me, she isn’t doing much’, but I was left in that state for quite a while until he was continuously raising the alarm.”
It wasn’t until 12 hours later that Jade was given a scan.
“I remember saying, ‘I’m in pain, I’m in pain, my stomach’, and when they did the scan there were litres of blood in my stomach,” she says. “Within three or four minutes I was in theatre because it was a life or death situation.”
Jade woke in intensive care the following afternoon.
“The effect on my husband, mentally, is probably greater than me because I went through it physically but he knows what it was like not to be listened to and then the outcome to be so traumatic.
“Would I have been shown more empathy if I was white? Possibly yes. Am I fearful of being that strong, opinionated person because I am black and don’t want to come
Jade waited 12hrs for a scan and it found litres of blood in her stomach
across as aggressive? I guess when you sit here saying, ‘was I not listened to because of the colour of my skin?’, it cuts deep.”
It wasn’t an easy conversation but Rochelle knew it was important.
“We don’t hear from the Jades, we hear of the women who didn’t make it,” she says. “But it doesn’t mean her experience was any less traumatic.”
But change doesn’t come easily.
“Do I feel it’s being taken seriously at a government level? Not how it needs to be,” says Rochelle. “I did try to get them involved but they gave a statement and chose not to take part in the documentary – and it wasn’t for lack of trying, let me tell you.”
The statement from Nadine Dorries, minister for maternity services, reads: “The colour of a woman’s skin should have no impact on her or her baby’s health.
“I am absolutely committed to tackling disparities and making sure all women get the right support and best possible maternity care. I have launched an oversight group to monitor how the health service is tackling maternal inequalities.” Rochelle doesn’t feel it goes far enough. “There needs to be serious commitment to specific targets to improve the disparity between the experiences of white, black and brown women. They need to sit down and explain how we’re not going to keep reading the same headlines.
“It’s heartbreaking that you fare worse if you’re a non-white woman. It’s obscene.
“There needs to be a definitive goal and an aim of when we should reach it and there doesn’t seem to be that urgency pinned on it at the moment.
“There’s no quick fix here, which is really sad, but this can’t go on.
“We need to shout it from the rooftops. When does this stop? When is this going to be taken seriously?”
The Black Maternity Scandal: Dispatches is on Channel 4 tomorrow at 8pm