NHS maternity probe head blasts 'unacceptable care'

Report highlights dirty wards, women bleeding in bathrooms and avoidable baby deaths amid a culture too slow to change

- ATHENA STAVROU HOLLY EVANS

Women were left to “bleed out” in bathrooms and babies suffered avoidable deaths in NHS maternity units, a damning review has found.

Changes within maternity care have been “too slow” despite being necessary and urgent, the head of an investigation into maternity care in England has said.

Valerie Amos, who is leading the national maternity and neonatal investigation (NMNI), has shared her initial findings after visiting seven trusts, talking with families and meeting NHS staff.

The report shows that the NHS has recorded a “staggering” 748 recommendations relating to maternity and neonatal care in the past decade.

Baroness Amos said she had expected to hear from families who had been “let down”, but that: “Nothing prepared me for the scale of unacceptable care that women and families have received, and continue to receive, the tragic consequences for their babies, and the impact on their mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.”

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday of the horrific things women have gone through, saying: “Families talk about coming into hospital, being put in rooms, being left in those rooms for hours on end. Women are bleeding out in bathrooms... the poor basic care they receive, the lack of attention.”

She said women had said “time and time again” that they have not been listened to.

The review also found that hospital wards suffered from a lack of cleanliness and pregnant women went hungry after not receiving meals.

Emily Barley, whose daughter Beatrice died because of failings at Barnsley Hospital in 2022 and who co-founded the Maternity Safety Alliance, told the BBC her daughter died during labour at full term.

“She was a healthy baby and she died because of really basic failings in care and also cruelty by staff,” she said.