UK probes maternity services after scandals
A series of reports into state-funded maternity units in recent years have laid bare failings in the care of women and babies.
A damning 2022 report into one found failures at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust in central England had contributed to the deaths of 201 babies and nine mothers over a 20-year period.
Streeting said it was clear from his meetings with bereaved families and others who had suffered avoidable harm that "something is going wrong" with England's maternity and neonatal services.
"That's why I've ordered a rapid national investigation to make sure these families get the truth and the accountability they deserve, and ensure no parent or baby is ever let down again," he said.
The investigation will be broken into two parts, a health ministry statement said.
The first will "urgently investigate up to 10 of the most concerning" maternity and neonatal units.
The second will be a nation-wide look at services "bringing together lessons from past inquiries to create one clear, national set of actions to improve care across every NHS maternity service".
Baby loss charity Sands welcomed the investigation calling it "much needed and long overdue".
'Line in the sand'
Jim Mackey, chief executive at NHS England, said the investigation would mark "a line in the sand for maternity care -- setting out one set of clear actions for NHS leaders to ensure high quality care for all".
The last Conservative government's health secretary, Sajid Javid, apologised in parliament after the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital probe was published in March 2022.
Report author Donna Ockenden listed repeated failings from 2000 to 2019 that resulted in babies being stillborn, dying shortly after birth or being left severely brain damaged.
Seven months later another report published more damning findings on services run by hospitals in east Kent in southeast England.
Some 45 babies who died at two hospitals there might have survived if their care had been up to standard, the report by Bill Kirkup found.
Kirkup, who seven years previously had published similar findings after probing baby deaths at another group of hospitals -- Morecambe Bay NHS Trust -- in northwestern England, said that once again, lessons had not been learned.
"On at least eight separate occasions over a 10-year period, the trust board (at East Kent) was presented with what should have been inescapable signals that there were serious problems.
"They could have put it right... but they didn't. In every single case they found a way to deny that there were problems," he said, adding: "This cannot go on."
Ockenden is currently carrying out a review of maternity services at hospitals in Nottingham in central England after serious concerns about standards.
'Critical condition'
A study published in January 2024 found the number of women in Britain dying during pregnancy or soon afterwards has reached its highest level in almost two decades.
The findings from MBRRACE-UK, which monitors maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths, and their causes, found that the maternal death rate for the period 2020-2022, was 11.54 per 100,000.
This is up from 8.79 per 100,000 in 2017-2019 and the highest since 2003-2005.
The NHS was a major issue at last year's general election.
In September an independent report described it as being in a "critical condition" following years of underfunding and ineffective reorganisation.
Others, however, argue that many of its problems are driven by poor practice and inefficiency, not lack of funding.
© 2025 AFP
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France 24
23-06-2025
- France 24
UK probes maternity services after scandals
Streeting said he ordered the probe after hearing many "deeply painful stories of trauma, loss and a lack of basic compassion –- caused by failures in NHS (National Health Service) maternity care that should never have happened". A series of reports into state-funded maternity units in recent years have laid bare failings in the care of women and babies. A damning 2022 report into one found failures at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust in central England had contributed to the deaths of 201 babies and nine mothers over a 20-year period. Streeting said it was clear from his meetings with bereaved families and others who had suffered avoidable harm that "something is going wrong" with England's maternity and neonatal services. "That's why I've ordered a rapid national investigation to make sure these families get the truth and the accountability they deserve, and ensure no parent or baby is ever let down again," he said. The investigation will be broken into two parts, a health ministry statement said. The first will "urgently investigate up to 10 of the most concerning" maternity and neonatal units. The second will be a nation-wide look at services "bringing together lessons from past inquiries to create one clear, national set of actions to improve care across every NHS maternity service". Baby loss charity Sands welcomed the investigation calling it "much needed and long overdue". 'Line in the sand' Jim Mackey, chief executive at NHS England, said the investigation would mark "a line in the sand for maternity care -- setting out one set of clear actions for NHS leaders to ensure high quality care for all". The last Conservative government's health secretary, Sajid Javid, apologised in parliament after the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital probe was published in March 2022. Report author Donna Ockenden listed repeated failings from 2000 to 2019 that resulted in babies being stillborn, dying shortly after birth or being left severely brain damaged. Seven months later another report published more damning findings on services run by hospitals in east Kent in southeast England. Some 45 babies who died at two hospitals there might have survived if their care had been up to standard, the report by Bill Kirkup found. Kirkup, who seven years previously had published similar findings after probing baby deaths at another group of hospitals -- Morecambe Bay NHS Trust -- in northwestern England, said that once again, lessons had not been learned. "On at least eight separate occasions over a 10-year period, the trust board (at East Kent) was presented with what should have been inescapable signals that there were serious problems. "They could have put it right... but they didn't. In every single case they found a way to deny that there were problems," he said, adding: "This cannot go on." Ockenden is currently carrying out a review of maternity services at hospitals in Nottingham in central England after serious concerns about standards. 'Critical condition' A study published in January 2024 found the number of women in Britain dying during pregnancy or soon afterwards has reached its highest level in almost two decades. The findings from MBRRACE-UK, which monitors maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths, and their causes, found that the maternal death rate for the period 2020-2022, was 11.54 per 100,000. This is up from 8.79 per 100,000 in 2017-2019 and the highest since 2003-2005. The NHS was a major issue at last year's general election. In September an independent report described it as being in a "critical condition" following years of underfunding and ineffective reorganisation. Others, however, argue that many of its problems are driven by poor practice and inefficiency, not lack of funding. © 2025 AFP
LeMonde
23-06-2025
- LeMonde
UK probes maternity services after scandals
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Monday, June 23, announced a "rapid national investigation" into English maternity services after a string of scandals over 15 years. Streeting said he ordered the probe after hearing many "deeply painful stories of trauma, loss and a lack of basic compassion – caused by failures in NHS (National Health Service) maternity care that should never have happened." A series of reports into services at maternity units in recent years have laid bare failings in the care of women and babies. A damning 2022 report into one found failures at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust in central England had contributed to the deaths of 201 babies and nine mothers over a 20-year period. Streeting said it was clear from his meetings with bereaved families and others who had suffered avoidable harm that "something is going wrong" with England's maternity and neonatal services. "That's why I've ordered a rapid national investigation to make sure these families get the truth and the accountability they deserve, and ensure no parent or baby is ever let down again," he said. The investigation will be broken into two parts, a Health Ministry statement said. The first will "urgently investigate up to 10 of the most concerning" maternity and neonatal units. The second will be a nationwide look at services, "bringing together lessons from past inquiries to create one clear, national set of actions to improve care across every NHS maternity service." A taskforce made up of experts and bereaved families will also be created, it said. 'Line in the sand' Jim Mackey, chief executive at NHS England, said the investigation would mark "a line in the sand for maternity care – setting out one set of clear actions for NHS leaders to ensure high quality care for all." The last Conservative government's health secretary, Sajid Javid, apologized in Parliament after the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital probe was published in March 2022. Report author Donna Ockenden listed repeated failings from 2000 to 2019 that resulted in babies being stillborn, dying shortly after birth or being left severely brain damaged. Seven months later another report published more damning findings on services run by hospitals in East Kent in southeast England. Some 45 babies who died at two hospitals there might have survived if their care had been up to standard, the report by Bill Kirkup found. Kirkup, who seven years previously had published similar findings after probing baby deaths at another group of hospitals – Morecambe Bay NHS Trust – in northwestern England, said that once again, lessons had not been learned. "On at least eight separate occasions over a 10-year period, the trust board [at East Kent] was presented with what should have been inescapable signals that there were serious problems. "They could have put it right (...) but they didn't. In every single case, they found a way to deny that there were problems," he said, adding, "This cannot go on." Ockenden is currently carrying out a review of maternity services at hospitals in Nottingham in central England after serious concerns about standards. A study published in January 2024 found that the number of women in Britain dying during pregnancy or soon afterwards has reached its highest level in almost two decades. The findings from MBRRACE-UK, which monitors maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths, and their causes, found that the maternal death rate for the period 2020-2022 was 11.54 per 100,000. This is up from 8.79 per 100,000 in 2017-2019 and the highest since 2003-2005.
Euronews
03-06-2025
- Euronews
Hospitals try to waste less laughing gas in bid to curb climate impact
An Irish hospital is trying to prevent unused laughing gas from escaping into the atmosphere, in a bid to curb waste and go green in healthcare. Nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, has long been used to relieve pain and relax patients ahead of surgery – but outdated hospital infrastructure means much of the anaesthetic gas is actually wasted and released into the atmosphere, where it remains for around 120 years. That's prompted concerns among health experts across Europe, who say leaks and other efficiency problems are worsening the environmental impact of a sector that is already among the heaviest polluters worldwide. This is 'the most important issue for us to look at by quite some distance,' Dr Paul Southall, sustainability lead for the UK's Royal College of Anaesthetists, told Euronews Health. Now, St John's Hospital in Limerick has become one of the first hospitals in Ireland to stop using nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic on a large scale after deactivating the extensive network of pipes that fed the gas directly to the hospital's operating rooms. 'Nitrous oxide is safe to use, but the infrastructure used to deliver it inevitably results in waste,' said Dr Hugh O'Callaghan, a consultant anaesthetist involved with the St John's project. In a statement, he added that modern methods to deliver anaesthesia are making laughing gas increasingly 'obsolete'. St John's will now rely on mobile equipment to bring anaesthetic cylinders directly into the operating room, according to Ireland's health services agency. Other Irish hospitals in the region are expected to follow suit in the coming months as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions from anaesthetic gases by 50 per cent by 2030, the agency said. Other European hospitals are also phasing out piped-in methods of delivering laughing gas, including those in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In the UK, for example, two hospitals replaced their large centralised nitrous oxide containers with small portable cylinders that could be wheeled into the operating room. This led to a 55 per cent reduction in monthly nitrous oxide emissions, from 333 tonnes to 150 tonnes, according to the National Health Service (NHS) in England. 'It's not about restricting clinical use, it's about creating a less wasteful system,' said Dr Cliff Shelton, a UK-based anaesthetist, professor, and co-chair of the safety, standards, and environmental sustainability committee at the Association of Anaesthetists, a professional group focused on the UK and Ireland. Last year, the group said UK and Irish hospitals should decommission their nitrous oxide pipelines 'as soon as possible,' ideally by 2027. In recent years, the health trust in Manchester, where Shelton works, has switched to a mobile-canister approach for nitrous oxide that he said has reduced the organisation's overall carbon footprint by about three per cent to five per cent. 'We've made it cheaper and greener, and people are still getting the same [anaesthetic] care they always got,' he told Euronews Health. These efforts are part of a broader reckoning among medical workers about how their field is exacerbating climate change, which is linked to a host of health issues, such as asthma, stroke, and mosquito-borne diseases. Globally, the health sector causes 4.4 per cent of net emissions, with the European Union contributing 248 million metric tons of carbon dioxide – behind only the United States and China, according to a 2019 report from the advocacy group Health Care Without Harm. When used as anaesthesia, laughing gas adds an additional one per cent to the EU health sector's carbon footprint, the group found. Other commonly used anaesthetic gases, such as sevoflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane, also contribute. But the vast majority of the health sector's carbon emissions are related to its supply chain – the production, transport, use, and disposal of medicines, medical kits, and other resources. That means minimising waste of nitrous oxide and other gas-based anaesthetics won't be enough for hospitals to offset their climate impact. Even so, sustainability-minded doctors believe it is a good start. 'When we looked into this, we found we were buying 100 times more nitrous oxide than we were actually using,' Shelton said. 'It's a moral imperative, really, to get on top of that [degree of waste],' he added. Organ transplantation, which is often the only way to save a life, is directly dependent on donors. But their sometimes unreliable availability often leads to patients dying before receiving a donated organ. There are two types of organ donations: from a living donor and cadaveric transplants. While options for a living donor are generally restricted to just the kidney and liver, in Kazakhstan it tends to save more lives than a posthumous donation. "Around the world, 80-90% of donations are posthumous, but the same cannot be said about Kazakhstan and the countries in Central Asia. In our country, 80-90% of donors are living relatives of the patients," said Aidar Sitkazinov, Director of the Republican Centre for Coordination of Transplantation and High-Tech Services in Kazakhstan. According to him, the reason many people refuse to donate their organs after death is a lack of trust in the healthcare system. The belief that corruption is everywhere makes them fear that donated organs will be misused or illegally sold, or that doctors will not treat the patients to get to their organs. Sitkazinov notes that selling organs is punishable by law in Kazakhstan. At the same time, dozens of people and several organisations are involved in the procedure for organ transplantation, and hospitals do not benefit monetarily or otherwise if a patient becomes a donor after death. Still, he understands that scandals surrounding organ transplantation often deter people from signing the donation form. Last year alone, there were 15 cases where people attempted to sell donated organs. Religion also plays a role. Many believe Islam or Orthodox Christianity - the two main religions in Central Asia - do not allow posthumous donation. Religious authorities in Kazakhstan all support posthumous donation as a charitable act, but that still has not swayed many people. The religious question is not unique to Kazakhstan or Central Asia. Studies have shown that a reluctance to donate organs after death is a long-standing trend in Islamic countries where living donations prevail. In contrast, in Europe organ donation after death is an established practice, covering up to 50% of the need for organs. Unlike in other parts of the world, Europe also uses organs of donors who died due to heart failure. As of May 2025, 4,226 people in Kazakhstan are on the waiting list for some kind of organ donation, 128 of whom are children. Of the total number of patients, 3,828 are waiting for a kidney, but in the worst case scenario that a donor is not found, those patients also have the option of haemodialysis, which can keep them alive for between 10 and 15 years. "Not everyone who needs an organ transplant is on this list. This category has no other alternative, only an organ transplant can save their lives," highlighted the director of the transplantation coordination body. According to him, on average 300 people die because there simply are not enough organ donors. "I'll give you a simple example – in 2024, we had 86 deceased donors who were diagnosed with brain death. All relatives were approached and only 10 families gave their consent," said Sitkazinov, noting that one deceased person can save seven lives. Kazakhstan has an opt-in consent system, where each citizen has to officially agree to donate their organs after death. However, even if the person gives consent, their relatives must also agree. This system came into place in 2020, after several lawsuits from the relatives of deceased persons, who were outraged that organs were extracted without their consent. In 2024, there were 260 transplantations, of which 237 were from a living donor. "The main problem is refusal of relatives. We also have a very low expression of will. As of January 2025, with an adult population of 11 million, 115,000 people have expressed their will to opt out, and only 8,000 opted in," noted Sitkazinov. All Central Asian countries share similar problems when it comes to posthumous donation; lack of trust in the system and misconceptions about the donations themselves. Until public awareness increases and systems prove to be more transparent and secure the number of organ donations from deceased people is unlikely to grow significantly.
