Weekend babies have “significantly” greater chance of death
Posted: November 25, 2015
Posted in: Birth Injury Medical Negligence Wrongful & Accidental Death
New research has revealed that babies born over the weekend in England have a “significantly” higher chance of dying than those born during the week. The research was carried out by the Imperial College London, which found that there were 7.1 deaths per 1,000 babies delivered during weekends. The study took over 1.3million births into account.
The researchers made the worrying finding that if every day had the same death rate as a Tuesday, which was the weekday with the lowest, there would be a total of 770 fewer baby deaths each year. The chance of death on a weekend is 7% higher than a weekday. The study pointed out that where the figures are still low, there is a significant difference, which really calls weekend care standards into question.
Strike of junior doctors
September of this year saw the compilation of a separate study, which found that patients admitted for care over the weekends had a higher risk of death within 30 days than someone admitted during the week. This research has been used to encourage an increase in the availability of care services at weekends, which provoked the strike of junior doctors.
A spokeswoman for NHS England said: “We have commissioned a wider independent review of NHS maternity services, which will assess how best we can respond to England’s growing birth rate and the need for well-staffed and safe services that give mums more say over their care.”
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