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UK Birth Statistics 2004

I’ve been emailed a brief summary of some main points from the recently released UK. Department of Health Maternity Statistics for 2003/4. I understand that the collection of data in the UK is a bit ad hoc, with various Trusts using different computer programs to compile the data but even so, the figures make interesting reading.

“Normal deliveries” [sic] are defined as those “without surgical intervention, use of instruments, induction, epidural or general anaesthetic”. The rate of normal births fell from 47% in 2002-03 to an estimated 46% in 2003-04 .

The caesarean birth rate was almost 23% and more than half of these were emergency caesareans. This was a slight increase, up from 22.0% in 2003-2003 to 22.7% in 2003 - 2004. The induction rate is over 20%, and the instrumental birth rate is about 12%. About one third of women had an epidural, general or spinal anaesthetic. The episiotomy rate is 12%.

These few figures tell the story of an increasingly medicalised approach to birth in the UK, one that is similar to most western industrialised countries. I believe that much of the problem stems from the pressure to manage all aspects of risk in our lives, and the willingness of authorities of all kinds to regulate what we can and can’t do. We keep saying that “birth is not an illness” yet it is treated as a risky procedure that must be managed at every level so that “harm is minimised”.

The results of this approach speak for themselves. Fewer and fewer babies are “born” and more and more are being “delivered”. The harm that is caused by this overindulgence in medicalised birth is never taken into account - we will never know the real outcomes for women’s physical, emotional and psychological health, or the long-term effects on babies who have been born full of drugs or pulled in an untimely fashion from their mother’s bodies. These results will be kept hidden (if they are every investigated) because it is unlikely that they will be seen as important. It is the management of the health care system that rates most highly, and woe betide anyone who has to use it, especially if they are not sick.

Posted by andrea at April 08, 2005 12:27 AM