Data relating to maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality

You asked

​​Could you tell me the following for the calendar year 2019 for the UK in general:

1. The number of women who, either pregnant or within 6 weeks postpartum, were taken into hospital via ambulance (for whatever reason and to either the maternity department or A&E)

2. Number of maternal morbidity and mortality cases following post-partum haemorrhage/major obstetric haemorrhage

3. Number of neonatal morbidity and mortality cases following births attended by midwives/consultants (so all hospital births and all homebirths attended by midwives) after the following complications:

   a. shoulder dystocia

   b. cord prolapse

   c. neonatal resuscitation

   d. vaginal breech birth

4. The number of women who sustained third or fourth degree tears following delivery not attended by a midwife or obstetrician (i.e. women who birthed their babies before they reached the hospital or women who were attended to by paramedics)

5. The number of women who birthed in hospital and sustained third or fourth degree tears following spontaneous unassisted vaginal delivery (i.e. NOT instrumental deliveries)

6. The number of maternity calls the ambulance service receive per year and what percentage of total calls this equates to

7. The number of babies the ambulance service delivered in 2019 (or 2018 if 2019 data is not yet available)

8. Number of cases of the following the ambulance service attend/treat:

   a. Post-partum haemorrhage

   b. Breech births

   c. Shoulder dystocias

   d. Cord prolapses

   e. Neonatal resuscitation

   f. Women in labour

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We do not hold data relating to the type or nature of delivery for births or on ambulance calls or services.

Therefore, we do not hold the information requested for items 3-8, nor for the morbidity aspects of items 2 and 3. NHS-Digital at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk may be able to help you with these parts of your request.

For the mortality aspects of 2 and 3, we hold data on adult deaths occurring in a reference year caused by post-partum haemorrhage, represented by the ICD-10 codes of O72.0-O72.3 (https://icd.who.int/browse10/2016/en#/O72). We also hold data on neonatal deaths where shoulder dystocia, cord prolapse, resuscitation or breech birth are mentioned on the neonatal death certificate. Neonatal deaths are registered using a special death certificate, which enables reporting of relevant diseases or conditions in both the infant and the mother. It is not possible to assign an underlying cause of death for neonatal mortality.

We take an annual extract of death occurrences in the autumn following the data reference year, therefore we would not be able to produce analysis for your request for 2019 data until the death occurrences dataset is available.

As this request would be bespoke analysis and subject to availability of resource, there will be a charge for this service, subject to our Charging Policy for unpublished data. The product may also be subject to disclosure controls.