‘shocking inequalities’ in maternity services… the deaths of 56 babies and 2 mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospital may have been preventable.
By Professor John Robertson OBA
BBC News at 6 [January 2025] has the above astonishing report goes on to list 6 or 7 other locations with comparable concerns to those in Leeds but there as no suggestion of blame for the current or previous governments.
In November 2023, I was able to write:
Note the wee print under the photo – 85 dangerously substandard maternity units in NHS England.
The ‘Scottish’ media are quiet. If they had something, they’d be all over it like nappy rash.
I searched for ‘Scotland maternity inspections substandard‘ – only English ‘hits’.
I searched the Healthcare Improvement Scotland site – nothing.
I tried ‘Scotland maternity hospital inspection concerns‘ – bingo!
As in the headline, only one minor concern in 2017 and another in 2013 but hey, using Reporting Scotland editorial standards, that’ll do. Get Gulhane or Baillie on the phone.
Equitable in Scotland?
See this from Stirling University researchers in the BMJ in 2019:
We found few differences in maternity care experience for women based on their physical or socioeconomic characteristics. Our findings indicate that maternity care in Scotland is generally equitable.
Further measures in Scotland:
In January 2024, the Daily Mail reporting a drop in the number of midwives, had:
Women are dying during childbirth at the same rates as two decades ago, ‘alarming’ new data shows. An independent review into maternity deaths showed 293 women died during pregnancy and within six weeks of giving birth between 2020 and 2022. Experts said the upward trend is the most compelling evidence yet that failures now span ‘across the entire maternity system’ and is ‘not just one or two hospitals.’
The overall rate in 2020-2022, was 13.41 deaths per 100 000 births and based on the graph in the Daily Mail piece was around 11.8 in 2020.
The rate in Scotland was 10.9 for 2018/2020, the most recent figures.
Today, the Scottish Government responded to a Freedom of Information request from, I’m guessing, a disappointed so-called health correspondent at BBC Scotland or the Herald, to reveal that spending, to improve maternity and neonatal services was £4.m in 2022/2023 up from around only £3m in the previous two years.
As for midwife supply:
In 2023, the total number of midwives in Scotland had grown from 3 529 to 3612.
Finally, a bit dated I know but from 2019:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400409637/
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00620/
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
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About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brown_(Scottish_activis
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
It is probably a tad naive to think that the broadcast media in Scotland might have picked up on the dire circumstances pertaining in not just Leeds area hospitals but across England to reassure Scotland’s expectant ‘mothers’ that the service and care they (will) receive is superior to that in (third world) England.
A forlorn hope.
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