It’s very touching that so many women have offered support
A digital summit on Friday brought together a team of campaigners calling for better miscarriage care in Scotland.
Former health secretary Shona Robison told The Sunday Post last week of how her own experience with miscarriage had encouraged her to help launch the campaign to ensure best practice is adopted across NHS Scotland.
She was among the politicians, doctors, charities and women who have endured miscarriage and met online for the first discussions about how to take the Changing Miscarriage Care campaign forward.
Dundee East
MSP Shona had a miscarriage in 2007. And after discovering one of her own staff, Nadia El-nakla, had experienced multiple miscarriage, the pair joined forces to launch Changing Miscarriage Care to call for best practice in care and treatment to be adopted across NHS Scotland and to help raise awareness of the physical and emotional toll of miscarriage.
The Zoom meeting saw 27 of the country’s leading doctors, clinicians, politicians, charities and women who have experienced miscarriage join forces.
Some of the issues raised were improvement in postmiscarriage treatment, care and counselling for women, the need for more bereavement midwives, and better counselling for men also affected.
Scottish Labour’s Monica Lennon MSP said: “More must be done to provide access to high-quality and specialist support and to end the postcode lottery that is letting too many women down.
“Miscarriage prevention needs to be higher on the agenda, including the role that progesterone can play in reducing risk.”
Ms Robison said the campaign had been met with a positive response.
“I have been totally overwhelmed by the number of people getting in touch to share their experiences,” she said. “It has been extremely touching that there are so many women out there affected by this who want to support the campaign.
“It feels like we are pushing at an open door and that’s good.”
Jane Brewin, CEO of Tommy’s charity, added: “Until recently, miscarriage was viewed as quite a trivial thing. Women didn’t talk about it and perhaps there was a thought that they just dusted themselves down and got on with it.
“Doctors thought there wasn’t anything we could do to prevent it, but with increasing knowledge and speed of discovery, it has now been realised that care can be improved.”