Chapter 1: Give every child the best start in life
Healthy pregnancy
To improve life chances for babies and to challenge gender norms across our society, it's important to focus on women's health during pregnancy and enable women to make healthier choices throughout their pregnancies.
A recent UK study has found that mortality rates have increased and sadly, between 2018 and 2020, 229 women died during or up to six weeks after the end of pregnancy.
(Knight M, Bunch K, Patel R, et al. (2022). Saving lives, improving mothers' care. MBRRACE-UK)
| Asian women were 1.8 times more likely to die than white women (16 women per 100,000) |
| Black women were 3.7 times more likely to die than white women (34 women per 100,000) |
(Knight M, Bunch K, Patel R, et al. (2022). Saving lives, improving mothers' care. MBRRACE-UK)
Healthy pregnancy has positive outcomes for us all and we all have a role to support women in having pregnancies that are as healthy as possible. There are many opportunities to support women to have healthy pregnancies by ensuring that the environment in which they live, work and socialise is healthy and beneficial to them and their babies.
Here, we look at what support is available for pregnant women in the workplace, ways to stop tobacco exposure, reducing the risk of domestic abuse, the importance of breastfeeding and the impact of post-natal depression.