Bradford & District | Archive | 2005 | June | 23
From the Telegraph & Argus, first published Thursday 23rd Jun 2005.
The "archaic" state of midwives' patient records in Bradford is hampering a Commission charged with investigating the city's high rate of baby deaths.
The statement was made at the third meeting of the Bradford District Infant Mortality Commission, when bereaved parents and experts met to find a way to cut infant deaths.
The commission was set up by Bradford Vision after it emerged the figure for baby deaths in the district was almost double the national average.
In 2003, 68 of the 7,500 babies born within the district died soon after birth or before their first birthday.
Kal Nawaz, joint services manager for Bradford Council's Early Years Service, said: "Midwives' record systems are archaic and make it extremely difficult to make findings about what is going on."
Commission member Jan Smithies said: "The midwives' system in Bradford is kept by hand. So, if we are trying to find one record or trying to compare 6,000 records we have to do it by hand.
"They are waiting for a new system to come online but it could be a number of years before this happens.
"One of the things we are looking at here is can we get some research funding for somebody to go in and put all these record on computer.
"That will put the information on record so we can look at issues that could affect infant mortality such as whether someone smokes and collate these findings."
Mrs Smithies said the Commission was the first one of its kind in the country and was getting a lot of national publicity.
Consultant neo-natalologist Dr Sam Oddie, of BRI, is looking at figures for baby deaths in Bradford from a five-year-period and comparing them with data from Mansfield, Doncaster and Leicester.
He said these cities had been picked for the blind study because they collectively represented the socio-economic and ethnic make-up of the Bradford.
He added: " Babies do seem to be dying more often than they should in Bradford even taking into account such issues as deprivation."
Julie Pansini-Murrell, head of Midwifery and Women's Health at the University of Bradford, said projects such as SureStart, which offered advice and support to parents, would need "at least 15 years to make a positive impact on infant mortality."
Fiona Meddings, a lecturer at the university, said consanguinity - as a result of marriage between blood relatives, such as first cousins - had long been thought to be the main cause of infant mortality among Pakistani women but figures had shown significant differences in pregnancy and birth weight between races and further research was needed before conclusions could be drawn.
The commission meets again in August.
© Newsquest Media Group 2008