Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department taking to reduce maternal mortality rates.

The Department is working with NHS England to continue driving down levels of stillbirth, neonatal mortality and maternal deaths. This is supported by initiatives set out in the 2017 Maternity Safety Strategy. These include:

- Independent learning investigations conducted by the Health Safety Investigation Branch into every case of maternal death. This will ensure that learning can be captured in an open and transparent way and quickly fed back into the system to reduce the likelihood of such events occurring again;

- NHS England and the Women’s Health Clinical Reference Group are working to develop a plan to introduce a network of maternal medicine specialists across the country to care for pregnant women with significant health conditions such as cardiac disease, epilepsy or diabetes. Cardiovascular issues are the leading indirect cause of maternal death in the United Kingdom. In addition, the Department will provide funding over three years to train 12 consultant physicians as ‘Obstetric Physicians’. The Obstetric Physicians will provide expert care for pregnant women with complex medical problems;

- Increasing the capacity in perinatal mental health services across England. This initiative was backed by a £365 million investment in 2016. Psychiatric causes such as suicide, drug and alcohol misuse are major causes of maternal death. Four new mental health Mother and Baby Units will open in the next two years and bed numbers in the existing 15 units will increase so that overall capacity is increased by 49% in 2018/19; and

- NHS England is also working closely with Health Education England who are leading on the development of a perinatal mental health competency framework. This supports the perinatal mental health workforce to develop the required skills and knowledge to support better identification of perinatal mental illness, early intervention and improved recovery rates. Targeted funding of £1.2 million was provided in 2017 to enable the training of mental health, maternity and primary care staff to increase awareness and skills related to perinatal mental health.

With these measures in place the Secretary of State for Health has set an ambition to halve the rate of maternal deaths by 2025.