Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure (a) early and (b) consistent diagnosis of Group B streptococcus.

Screening for group B streptococcus (GBS) is not routinely offered to all pregnant women. The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) last reviewed the evidence to screen for GBS at 35 to 37 weeks of pregnancy in 2017, and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the benefits of screening would outweigh the harms. This is because the test currently available cannot accurately distinguish between those mothers whose babies are at risk, and those who are not. This means that many women would unnecessarily be offered antibiotics during labour.

A risk-based approach is taken, whereby those women identified as being at increased risk of having a baby affected by GBS are managed according to agreed clinical guidelines on the prevention of early on-set neonatal GBS infection.

The National Institute for Health Research funded a large-scale clinical trial to compare universal screening for GBS against the usual risk factor-based strategy. The UK NSC will review its recommendation, considering the evidence from the trial, once the report is available.