Mid-Dorset and North Poole MP Annette Brooke joins battle to cut baby deaths

Now a Dorset MP has joined Poole parents Emma and Nick Johnston and the infant death charity, SANDS, in pledging to highlight the appalling statistics and to try and reduce the number of babies who die this way.

MP for Mid-Dorset and North Poole Annette Brooke said: “I was shocked to discover the scale of baby deaths in the UK. These deaths have a devastating impact on parents and their families.”

Mr and Mrs Johnston lost their daughter, Daisy, on February 21 last year. In an interview published in the Daily Echo last summer, Mrs Johnston described how her ‘textbook labour’ turned to tragedy when Daisy’s heart stopped beating and she was rushed into Poole Hospital.

“A part of me was thinking it’s going to be all right, then it was not; it was absolutely horrific,” said Mrs Johnston, describing the minutes after her baby’s birth as ‘a warzone’.

She has spent the last year campaigning to raise awareness of stillbirth and neo-natal death and accompanied Mrs Brooke to a reception at the Palace of Westminster where SANDS launched its new report: Preventing Babies’ Deaths: What Needs to Be Done.

SANDS believes that 1,200 babies’ lives could be saved every year through a combination of more research, better care and greater awareness of the risks.

The charity says it is extremely concerned by the UK’s high stillbirth rates; stillbirth numbers here are the same today as they were in the late 1990s, with one in 200 babies being stillborn.

Neal Long, chief executive of Sands, addressed MPs at the parliamentary reception. “A third of stillborn babies – around 1,200 babies – are perfectly formed and born at gestations when they might safely be delivered,” he said. “But routine antenatal care is failing to detect far too many babies who need help. These babies’ deaths are those that SANDS, researchers and clinicians working in obstetrics, believe are avoidable deaths.”