Deaths such as that of Frances Cappuccini are rare: fewer than nine in 100,000 women die in pregnancy or around childbirth, and the vast majority of those are not directly linked to the pregnancy.
However, patient advocates and medical staff agree that the system is under severe pressure.
A report out today says that half of women giving birth experience a “red-flag event”, including serious delays in being given stitches and not being given the medicines or pain relief they need. One woman told the survey she had been left, unwashed, in the bed she gave birth in for 12 hours while others reported being treated like “a product on a conveyor belt”.
The report, from the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and NCT, blamed a chronic shortage of midwives, estimated to be 3,500 in England. It said there had been scant progress since a similar report four years ago, with almost one in five women still not receiving one-to-one care from a midwife while in established labour.
Mary Ann Lumsden, senior vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said that there were also serious shortages of maternity doctors, leaving many units dangerously stretched. The report also found that 88 per cent of women had never previously met any of the midwives who looked after them during labour.
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One woman in five did not see a midwife as often as she required after giving birth, and a third of those women said that it resulted in the delayed diagnosis and treatment of a health problem in them or their baby.