Saving Mothers' Lives: the continuing benefits for maternal health from the United Kingdom (UK) Confidential Enquires into Maternal Deaths

Abstract

The actions that have followed the recommendations of successive publications of the UK Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths have helped save mothers' lives and reduced ill health and morbidity. Through the implementation of their recommendations, they have helped improve access to, and the quality of, the maternity care provided for all pregnant women in the United Kingdom. The enquires help review, assess, and identify the underlying remediable factors that contributed to mothers' deaths and aggregate the lessons learned to make recommendations to develop services that help overcome many of the barriers to safe, high-quality maternity care, which vulnerable women continue to face. This chapter provides a short summary of the positive contributions the successive reports on Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths, "Saving Mothers' Lives," have made to maternal health outcomes in the United Kingdom for more than half a century. It also demonstrates why such systems continue to be beneficial around the world, including countries with very low maternal mortality rates.