End racial disparities in maternal deaths

An MPs' report is calling for faster progress to tackle "appalling" higher death rates for black women and those from poorer areas in childbirth.

The Women and Equalities Committee report says racism has played a key role in creating health disparities.

But the many complex causes are "still not fully understood" and more funding and maternity staff are also needed.

The NHS in England said it was committed to making maternity care safer for all women.

The government said it had invested £165m in the maternity workforce and was promoting careers in midwifery, with an extra 3,650 training places a year.

Black women are nearly four times more likely than white women to die within six weeks of giving birth, with Asian women 1.8 times more likely, according to UK figures for 2018-20.

And women from the poorest areas of the country, where a higher proportion of babies belonging to ethnic minorities are born, the report says, are two and a half times more likely to die than those from the richest.

Caroline Nokes, who chairs the committee, said births on the NHS "are among the safest in the world" but black women's raised risk was "shocking" and improvements in disparities between different groups were too slow.

"It is frankly shameful that we have known about these disparities for at least 20 years - it cannot take another 20 to resolve," she added.