Black Maternal Healthcare and Mortality

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Gary. I, too, would like to begin by thanking the Five X More campaign for raising awareness and bringing this important debate to Parliament, and my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for her bravery in sharing her devastating story with us all tonight.

I am a black mother of twins and I had a very positive experience, but sadly, too many black women are dying needlessly in childbirth. In today’s historic debate, we have already heard incredibly personal and heartfelt stories, and I pay tribute to my sisters’ strength and bravery in sharing their experience to help to bring about change.

The rate for black mothers dying during or just after childbirth is five times that of white mothers in the UK; and black babies have a 121% increased risk of a stillbirth. It is estimated that for every instance of maternal mortality, there are 100 severe maternal morbidities or near misses. Behind every one of these statistics is a story, and behind every one of these mothers who dies is a group of women who had a near miss.

The report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which was published last year, highlighted the lack of an NHS target to end this obscene disparity and urged the Government to introduce one. I call on the Government today to rectify that urgently and set ambitious targets to address and eliminate these inequalities, including to halve the number of black maternal deaths by 2023.

The 2019 MBRRACE-UK report revealed that almost all those who died during or after pregnancy had multiple issues such as mental or physical health problems or were victims of domestic abuse or were living in a deprived area. More than half of those who died were overweight or obese. Black women are more likely to have conditions that can put them at greater risk, including cardiac disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. We must ask the deeper question of why black and Asian women are more likely to have those pre-existing health conditions in the first place. There is no specific genetic connection between all black people. Many of these pre-existing conditions are non-communicable diseases that are driven by social determinants of health, such as poverty, education and housing. Women living in the most deprived areas were three times more likely to die than those living in more affluent areas. Social services were involved in the lives of 20% of the women who died.

We are now a year into a pandemic that has laid bare the pervasive health inequalities that exist in our country. We have seen clearly that race, class, housing, education, income and employment all directly define someone’s chances of survival. More than half of pregnant women admitted with covid-19 in the first two months of the pandemic were black, Asian or from another minority ethnic group. Black women have been eight times more likely to be admitted to hospital as a result of coronavirus. These inequalities are widening and will become more profound as deprivation and disadvantage continue to be fuelled by the pandemic and women continue to suffer.

The recent Sewell report, backed by the Government, who allegedly had a hand in doctoring its findings, had the gall to assert that structural racism no longer exists as a dominating force in Britain today. The figures and the stories that we have heard today tell a very different story, so will the Minister go back to the Government and appeal to them to rectify the report, given the undeniable evidence we have heard today? This must be a turning point. The Government must commit today to a national strategy to tackle health inequality, which must include a road map and a timeframe for the eradication of the racial injustice in maternity care.