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Maternity safety campaigners head to Downing Street to demand action


More than 20 leading NHS doctors and experts back Baby Lifeline demand for safety training for maternity staff to cut £7m a day negligence costs

The Independent’s maternity safety campaign goes to Downing Street today as senior figures from across the health service deliver a letter demanding action from prime minister Boris Johnson.

Charity Baby Lifeline will be joined by bereaved families, Royal Colleges and senior midwives and doctors in Downing Street to hand in a letter calling on the government to reinstate a national fund for maternity safety training.

Baby Lifeline, which has also launched an online petition today, said the government needed to find £19m to support training of both midwives and doctors to prevent deaths and brain damage, which can cost the NHS millions of pounds for a single case.

The letter to Mr Johnson has also been signed by Dr Bill Kirkup, who led the investigation into baby deaths at the Morecambe Bay NHS trust and is investigating poor care at the East Kent Hospitals University Trust.

He said: “There have been real improvements in maternity services, but as recent events in Kent and Shropshire have shown only too clearly, much more remains to be done. The Maternity Safety Training Fund is badly needed.”

Sir Robert Francis QC, Chairman of the public inquiry into poor care at Stafford Hospital, who also signed, said: “The cost in lost and broken lives, not to mention the unsustainable financial burden and the distress of staff caused by these avoidable mistakes, is indefensible.”

Other signatories included former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and a number of senior maternity figures, charities and clinical associations.

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Source: The Independent, 6 March 2020

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