Giving birth is a traumatic and difficult experience and it is only due to the development of modern medicine and greater knowledge about the development of babies inside their mothers and the mechanics of birth that this process is not as lethal as it once was. Even in many people’s lifetimes, for example in 1971, the infant mortality rate was higher than it is now. Back then in the United Kingdom there were 23 child deaths out of one thousand live births with most of those deaths being neonatal. To contrast, in 2019 there were only 5 mostly neonatal deaths per thousand births. This is a big and welcome improvement. However it could be better.

It’s quite possible that one reason why neonatal deaths have stubbornly refused to drop from 5 per 1000 to lower in the UK might be down to Britain’s appalling maternity services. You only have to hang around with expectant mothers for short time to hear of parents and prospective parents debating which NHS maternity hospital is the best or rather the least worst in their area. The reason for this debate among parents and soon-to-be parents is that there is a lack of consistency in quality when it comes to NHS maternity services. Even when a mother can access a ‘good’ maternity hospital that’s no guarantee that the services provided will be consistently of good quality. A case I in point is the hospital where my son was born. Although the hospital was better than most there were still issues including a badly and incompetently administered epidural that nearly crippled his mum. What I saw when my son was born was a hospital mired in confusion and inadequacy and staffed by those who quite plainly saw mothers, partners and babies as units to be treated as a number rather than as valued customers with rights and fears at what is a very difficult time.

From reading a recent piece in Unherd magazine written by a former specialist in Obstetrics and Gynaecology I’m not alone in my negative assessment of NHS maternity services. Babies are dying or being left with life changing and life limiting disabilities because of incompetence, internal staff politics and negligence. The cost of financial compensation dished out by the NHS to parents whose babies have either died or been crippled runs into the millions. If things were better organised and better run in NHS maternity units then this money that has been paid out to grieving and justifiably angry parents might be able to be spent on providing better services to mothers and babies.

The former Obs/Gynae specialist who wrote the article, Dr Emma Jones speaks of a culture of unhealthy competition between medical and midwifery students who need to help out in a large number of births in order to meet the quota needed for their training. This sort of thing where competition between students of different but related disciplines can end up with parents and babies being sidelined by the medical and nursing staff but a bigger problem is the ongoing and worsening conflict between midwifery staff and medical staff. In Britain’s maternity units a culture of tribalism and conflict reigns supreme. On this matter Dr Jones said:

This internal politics put lives at risk. An obstetrician friend often talks of being sidelined or ignored by midwives, while midwives have complained to me of a hierarchy that seeks to undermine their independence. Throughout the country, the battle between doctors and midwives for “control” of the delivery room results in poor decision-making. Mediation is needed in severe cases, but senior hospital managers are often too busy watching their own backs to intervene. It’s a dynamic that causes injuries and fatalities.

The fact that there is this disgraceful ‘turf war’ between different parts of the maternity units is sadly symptomatic of the dysfunction of the NHS. This sort of conflict and the unwillingness of management to actually manage because the management are looking after number one is all too common in both the NHS and the wider public sector in the UK.

Dr Jones then speaks of the latest NHS maternity scandal that is about to get much wider publicity that of Nottingham. In this case dozens of babies have died due to inadequate treatment and where the hospital is actually being prosecuted by the police due to one particularly egregious treatment failure that led to the death of a child.

The deaths of babies along with the long term disabilities caused to children by piss poor treatment in NHS maternity units is absolutely appalling especially as many of these neonatal deaths appear to be preventable. However the situation regarding the numbers of neonatal deaths might be much higher if deaths were recorded properly. However this does not appear to be happening as Dr Jones alleges that there are cover ups going on with deaths caused by inadequate treatment being classified as ‘still births’.

Dr Jones, speaking in the context of another of the many scandals surrounding NHS maternity units said:

It’s no surprise, then, that it’s not the only trust with a maternity ward that systematically fails. A disturbing number have been caught out recording baby deaths as “stillbirths”, in what many argue is an attempt to avoid scrutiny. East Kent University NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, Warrington Hospital, Milton Keynes Hospital and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust — the list is endless. A Stockport NHS Foundation Trust obstetrician recently told a coroner that he had been pressured by an NHS manager to claim a baby delivered in the hospital was stillborn. Dr Mark Tattersall said it was done out of “loyalty” to the trust (his NHS manager denied this). This is the language of the mafia — not a taxpayer-funded, state-run healthcare system.

The NHS management in this case is indeed using the language of Mafiosi rather than of a healthcare system in an advanced Western nation. Having seen how the NHS covered up the death of my mother who was given by hospital staff an antibiotic that had been ineffective for her in the past, which meant that her sepsis was not treated with the proper antibiotic in time, I can quite easily believe that cover ups are going on with regards neonatal deaths in NHS maternity units. The problem that the NHS has and one which is it has in common with many other public sector entities is that the staff’s loyalties are not with the patients or customers, but with the organisation itself. Protecting the NHS and diverting criticism from the NHS onto something, anything, else rather than protecting the patients, becomes the priority for staff.

Newborn babies are some of the most vulnerable of the patients who are treated by the NHS. They can’t raise their voices to complain, their mothers are often exhausted from the experience of giving birth and others with the mother and baby such as fathers and other relatives might be intimidated by the hospital environment and hospital staff into being silent about problems or potential problems. Parents and especially mothers have little or no choice but to rely on NHS staff when their babies are born and it seems that is these same sometimes uncaring and grossly incompetent NHS maternity staff who are at the heart of the growing number of problems and scandals that surround NHS maternity services.

I’m all for the idea of universal healthcare for Britons. People should be able to get proper and effective treatment when they are ill or when mothers are giving birth. But it’s increasingly obvious now that Britons and especially new born babies along with their mothers and fathers, deserve a great deal better than the service that the NHS is providing.