Maternal Mortality: Ethnic Groups

(asked on 22nd May 2023) - View Source

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 end the Black maternal mortality gap.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 5th June 2023

While births in England are among the safest globally, we must do more to ensure maternity care is consistent regardless of ethnicity. To address this, Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems have begun to publish Equity and Equality Action Plans to tackle disparities in outcomes and experiences of maternity care at a local level.

NHS England have developed fourteen Maternal Medicine Networks across England, to ensure that all women with chronic and acute medical problems around pregnancy have access to specialist management and care from physicians and obstetrics, tackling the biggest contributors to maternal mortality. Knowing that black women are more likely to suffer with a pre-existing condition, they should be a key group for whom the networks provide benefit.

Further to this, the Maternity Disparities Taskforce, who last held a meeting in April, brings together experts from across the health system, government departments and the voluntary sector to explore and consider evidence-based interventions to tackle maternal disparities.

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