Pre-eclampsia

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone. I am sure that happened just earlier this week or maybe it was last week; maybe it is every week.

I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) for securing this important debate, just ahead of World Pre-Eclampsia Day on 22 May, and for her heartfelt, thoughtful and passionate speech. She is so brave, as has already been said, to do this. I know, and she knows, how hard it is to speak in a debate about something as personal and hurtful as the loss of a baby; nothing can ever be harder. I have the honour of being vice-chair, along with the hon. Lady, of the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss, which we set up. All the Members who set up the group have had the awful experience of baby loss, which makes it such a powerful all-party group. We all take the work it does very seriously and have had some small achievements, thanks to the Government listening to the voices from the group.

Some changes are being made and implemented across the country because of it. I am proud that we are able to use our own tragic experiences of loss to campaign for better care, treatment and diagnosis for future parents, so that hopefully they do not ever have to go through anything like the experience that the hon. Lady has been through. Let us hope that the debate today, which, as the hon. Lady said, is the first debate of its kind, will lead to some future changes that will ensure that even fewer people will have to go through that experience. I was so very sorry to hear the details of the hon. Lady’s own personal experience of pre-eclampsia. I knew that was how she had lost her son, but not the detail. I thank her for sharing her story with us and I am sure that Kenneth would have been very proud of his mum.

I also thank the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) and for Glasgow East (David Linden) for their excellent speeches, and I join everyone in saying how disappointing it is that there are not more Members attending this important debate. Perhaps the debate about acquired brain injury, taking place in the Chamber, has drawn a bigger crowd of available Members. Nevertheless, what we have lacked in quantity we have certainly made up for in quality; this has been an excellent debate so far, and we have yet to hear from the Minister.

As we have heard, pre-eclampsia affects around 6% of pregnancies; that means 1,000 babies a year are stillborn due to this awful condition. That is not good enough; it has to be and it can be reduced, as we have heard. The last triennial audit of maternal deaths in the UK reported that of the 22 deaths from pre-eclampsia, 14 were avoidable. Again, that number can be reduced. Because the symptoms of pre-eclampsia are so similar to the general symptoms of pregnancy, they are often missed and that can be fatal. That is why we are here today: to raise awareness and ensure change.

Women with diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease and a body mass index of over 35 are more likely to develop pre-eclampsia. Many instances of these conditions can be prevented with a healthy lifestyle. As the Shadow Minister for Public Health, I cannot miss any opportunity to mention prevention and the cuts to health services of £800 million between 2015 and 2021 under this Government. If public health budgets, which fund services such as obesity services, had not been slashed so vigorously by the Government, the number of women with these conditions would be reduced. Even so, where cases have not been prevented, these women should still be a priority for midwives and healthcare professionals, and offered the tests that exist for pre-eclampsia, and support throughout their pregnancy. The same goes for women with lupus, women over the age of 40, women expecting multiple babies and women who have had pre-eclampsia before.

If we target the women most at risk of developing pre-eclampsia, we can detect the condition early and prevent fatalities. Finding at-risk women is now much easier as tests are available, as we have heard, that can predict with nearly 100% accuracy which mothers are at risk of pre-eclampsia, but unfortunately the tests are not being used to their advantage. The test that is currently the only NICE-approved clinically available diagnostic test for pre-eclampsia in the UK has seen uptake in only a handful of trusts so far, meaning that very few women in the UK have access to those life-saving tests. Will the Minister write to NHS trusts urging them to take up those tests, and advising them of the clinical guidance to do so?

Those tests can improve patient safety through accurate diagnosis upon the suspicion of pre-eclampsia, reduce the number of unnecessary admissions of suspected pre-eclampsia and reduce the direct costs to the system from the array of in-patient monitoring tests that are undertaken on the woman and her foetus. They will also relieve the stress and anxiety felt by expectant mothers that their symptoms are pre-eclampsia. We still do not know the root cause of pre-eclampsia. Does the Minister have any plans to fund research into the causes of pre-eclampsia so that more cases can be prevented each year?

Expectant mothers must also be made aware of pre-eclampsia and the signs and symptoms to look out for. I can remember being told about this terrible condition and every time my legs swelled or I had a urine test I would worry that I would get it. Maybe I was more informed or just a worrier, but I probably did not know enough about pre-eclampsia then. I might have been worrying needlessly; information is always a good thing. The knowledge will also fuel patient-led demand for testing and will, again, help to prevent deaths.

I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that the Department will look at this important issue further in the future, so that no more families have to go through the pain and suffering of losing a child to pre-eclampsia that we have heard about today.