New official figures have been released showing - 17 Oct 2025 - (386 words) - Jaynes Baby Bank
New official figures have been released showing how many mums in the UK are dying in pregnancy, childbirth and the post-natal period.
And we need to talk about them because they are not what they seem when you look at the headline figures.
So the maternal death rate is the number of women who die per every 100,000 pregnancies in the UK.
And the latest figures show this rate is ever so slightly decreased on last year but basically still at record levels that we haven't seen in 20 years.
But the most striking figure was changes to the maternal death rate in black women.
Now to understand what's going on we have to sort of roll back to 2017-2018.
Back then it became clear that there was a huge gap emerging between the outcomes of white and black mums in the UK and that black mums were five times more likely to die than white women.
Now what the latest figures show is that instead of being five times more likely to die during childbirth, black women are now 2.3 times more likely to die.
Now first of all obviously that is unacceptable that any group is twice as likely to experience avoidable death.
It's also really depressingly not the progress that it sounds.
When you look at the actual figures of the number of black women who died, they haven't halved.
It's gone down a bit but we're not looking at like great progress there.
What has happened though is that the number of white women dying in the peri-natal period has gone up by about 30%.
So yes the figures make it look like that gap has halved and that that's progress but actually we haven't really improved safety in maternity for black women.
At the same time maternity care for white women has become less safety.
That's a double failure.
It's important to note that the authors of the report, which is compiled by Oxford University, were very clear these figures should not be interpreted as progress.
Giving birth in the UK on the But having said that, I cannot believe that we are in a situation where terminal death rates have gone back to what they were 20 years ago.
You can follow me for needs you can trust on what's going on in women's health.
And we need to talk about them because they are not what they seem when you look at the headline figures.
So the maternal death rate is the number of women who die per every 100,000 pregnancies in the UK.
And the latest figures show this rate is ever so slightly decreased on last year but basically still at record levels that we haven't seen in 20 years.
But the most striking figure was changes to the maternal death rate in black women.
Now to understand what's going on we have to sort of roll back to 2017-2018.
Back then it became clear that there was a huge gap emerging between the outcomes of white and black mums in the UK and that black mums were five times more likely to die than white women.
Now what the latest figures show is that instead of being five times more likely to die during childbirth, black women are now 2.3 times more likely to die.
Now first of all obviously that is unacceptable that any group is twice as likely to experience avoidable death.
It's also really depressingly not the progress that it sounds.
When you look at the actual figures of the number of black women who died, they haven't halved.
It's gone down a bit but we're not looking at like great progress there.
What has happened though is that the number of white women dying in the peri-natal period has gone up by about 30%.
So yes the figures make it look like that gap has halved and that that's progress but actually we haven't really improved safety in maternity for black women.
At the same time maternity care for white women has become less safety.
That's a double failure.
It's important to note that the authors of the report, which is compiled by Oxford University, were very clear these figures should not be interpreted as progress.
Giving birth in the UK on the But having said that, I cannot believe that we are in a situation where terminal death rates have gone back to what they were 20 years ago.
You can follow me for needs you can trust on what's going on in women's health.