What Price Safe Motherhood for Migrant Women in the UK?

It’s surely a basic human instinct to want to protect children and help them flourish. Additionally, women have a right to access all NHS maternity care whether or not they are able to pay for their care. Good quality services led to improvements in maternal and child health but it appears those gains were fragile. What was taken for granted is now not afforded to all who live here?

 Systems in place in the UK seem designed to grind down the spirit, resilience and resources of pregnant women and new mothers who need them most.

 Safety needs vigilance and clinicians must not be drawn in as unwilling bystanders to a loss of safe care. The National Institute of Health and Social Care Excellence has special guidance for pregnancy with complex social factors.

Although specific groups of poverty and migrants are not spelt out, these undoubtedly are high-risk pregnancies. The women described in the report are migrants, and mostly destitute. When NICE guidance for maternity care is undermined by charging, there will inevitably be poor health outcomes for mothers and babies. These are real people, not pawns in a game of political point scoring.

Read the full report: https://is.gd/syyIcr