{"id":733817,"date":"2026-08-10T20:10:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T20:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/733817\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T20:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T20:10:17","slug":"one-in-five-mothers-attend-ae-in-the-year-after-giving-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/733817\/","title":{"rendered":"One in five mothers attend A&E in the year after giving birth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\tA report from Nuffield Trust shows that black women and those with mental health conditions are most likely to face health complications in the post-partum period.<\/p>\n

Around one in five mothers attend A&E in the year after they give birth, a report<\/a> from the Nuffield Trust shows. Black women, those from the most deprived areas and mothers with mental health conditions are among those more likely to receive emergency care than average.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Researchers examined which groups are most likely to face health complications during the post-partum period. Using NHS data, they looked at about 1.6 million births that occurred between April 2021 and March 2024, which equates to about 1.5 million people having babies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many of the emergency hospital trips happened in the very early stages of motherhood. One in ten occurred in the first two weeks after birth and almost a quarter within the first six weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The three most recorded reasons were abdominal pain, chest pain and bleeding from the vagina. However, no reasons were recorded for 21% of visits, which report lead, Sarah Scobie, described as \u201cappalling\u201d and a clear area of improvement for the NHS to understand the health of new mothers better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Women of black ethnicities were more likely than average to go to hospital in an emergency when their babies were less than a year old. For example, 27% of black Caribbean, 26% of black African and 28% of mothers of \u2018any other\u2019 black ethnicity had an emergency care visit. That\u2019s compared with 23% of white British, 22% of white Irish and 19% of mothers with \u2018other\u2019 white ethnicities.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, emergency care visits followed 27% of deliveries in the most deprived areas and became less frequent as deprivation fell. And in nearly 70% of deliveries, mothers had at least one pre-existing health condition, many of which, such as obesity and diabetes, are potentially preventable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Health inequalities<\/p>\n

Researchers also noted that 30% of mothers with a mental health condition visited A&E, compared with 19% of those without one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most visits did not result in admission, suggesting some could have been avoided with better support in the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The recent Amos Review<\/a> into maternity and neonatal services highlighted the inequalities faced by women during pregnancy, particularly black women, with racism and discrimination embedded in the system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report shows that \u201chealth inequalities follow women into the next phase of motherhood,\u201d Scobie, deputy director of research at Nuffield Trust, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scobie urged policymakers and NHS leaders to examine whether post-birth A&E visits could be avoided with better community care and improved preventative support well before birth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Strategies to improve the health of girls and women must be prioritised alongside addressing the failures in maternity care, report co-author Veena Raleigh, who is a senior fellow at the King\u2019s Fund, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raleigh argued that \u201cadverse maternal outcomes\u201d are strongly associated with conditions that are preventable, such as obesity and hypertension, and are more common among deprived and some ethnic minority communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGirls and women from these communities are at risk even before they embark on pregnancy,\u201d Raleigh said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A report from Nuffield Trust shows that black women and those with mental health conditions are most likely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-733817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}