Eleven babies a day. Eleven lives which should have been lived. One baby every two hours, stillborn.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this statistic belongs to a third world country, but unfortunately it’s a tad closer to home than that. In April, medical journal The Lancet published a series of reports which revealed that the UK is ranked 33rd out of 35 countries in the developed world for stillbirth rates. Other countries, like Australia, have brought their rates down following investment in research; but not us. For some reason, the UK’s stillbirth rate has remained the same for the last decade.
It’s a myth (and a pathetic assumption) that a stillborn baby was simply ‘never meant to be’. The research also found that just 5% of the 2.6 million babies stillborn worldwide in 2009 had a congenital abnormality.
This is why Sands – the charity I’m writing for – has teamed up with Grazia, the fashion magazine, to petition the government; demanding that research is funded to discover why these babies are dying, and to develop new ways of screening pregnancies to save lives.
Please take a minute out of your day to sign the petition. It could save eleven lives a day.
Great cause, off to sign the petition now but I think baby-invoked sleep deprivation might have affected your maths – should be one baby every two hours surely? Still far too many mind x
Oops – you’re absolutely right – got my numbers mixed up! Thanks! x
Thanks for the heads up regarding still births. It is a pervasive myth that the babies “were never meant to be”.