All maternity units in England have been advised to encourage natural birth and keep the caesarean births to about 20% unless urgent or due to medical issues with the mother or child.
This was brought in due to one of the many NHS trusts being criticized for severely poor maternity care after a caesarean birth.
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust is currently being investigated for nearly 2,000 maternity incidents.
What is a caesarean birth also known as a C-Section birth?
Caesarean sections are when a baby is delivered through a surgical cut into the woman’s abdomen and womb, there are three ways to get accepted for a C-Section and they are:
- Elective; at the mother’s request, may be due to a traumatic birth previous.
- Planned; this will most likely happen due to medical issues with the mother or baby, in most cases, the baby is breech (feet down) or on the larger side.
- Emergency; this is where women chose to have natural labour but complications could have happened during the labour.
More than one out of every four babies born in England is now delivered by either elective or emergency Caesarean Sections.
NHS England chief midwife Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent and clinical director for women’s health Dr Matthew Joly said in the letter they were “concerned” by trusts focusing on hitting targets.
“We, therefore, ask all maternity services to stop using total Caesarean section rates as a means of performance management, as we are concerned by the potential for services to pursue targets that may be clinically inappropriate and unsafe in individual cases,” the letter says.
banner and image credits: LittleDogKorat/Shutterstock.com
