Black Maternity Deaths in the UK

As I stated in my recent blog post on Stylist’s Black British Women’s Census, Black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth as are white women in the UK. 

I watched the Dispatches report on Black maternity deaths last night.

A report on Black women, Racism and Human Rights produced by the House of Commons and House of Lords Joint Committee last year (2020) showed that Black women were five times more likely to die in childbirth, or within six weeks after childbirth, than were white women. This figure has now dropped to four times, but this drop is not considered to be statistically significant.

The report concluded that Black people’s human rights are not equally protected.

The report found that “over 60% of Black people in the UK do not believe their health is as equally protected by the NHS compared to white people”.

It also found that “85% of black [sic] people are not confident that they would be treated the same as a white person by the police”.

Asian women are twice as likely to die in childbirth as are white women.

You can read the report here or read the summary, conclusions and recommendations here.

According to Dispatches, the system knows there is a problem but has no targets to end this.

Maternal deaths are not the only issue here. A “near miss” is defined as a life-threatening complication or morbidity during or within six weeks after childbirth.

African women (from Africa) are 83% more likely to experience a “near miss” than white women. African Caribbean women are 80% more likely to experience a “near miss” than white women. 

 

Several women described their experiences of maternity care, and mistakes that were made, and there is an ongoing issue about Black patients not being given sufficient pain relief.  This happens on both sides of the Atlantic.  One of the women interviewed was an NHS Consultant who had experienced poor quality treatment as a patient.  

 

I have personally had my own experience of having two different NHS doctors at two different London hospitals try to pressure me into having a hysterectomy I neither needed nor wanted. This was NOT maternity related. It has echoes of what Fanny Lou Hamer called the “Mississippi appendectomy”. 

 

Five X More is an organisation of Black women challenging the statistics and offering mutual support to mothers.

Their petition on addressing disparities in maternity care, which they posted in March/April 2020, has obtained 183,000 signatures, which means it will have to be discussed in Parliament. Five X More found that many mothers were not aware of the statistics.

This reminds me of the Windrush Scandal, where people who were targeted were unaware that many thousands of people were going through the same ordeal.

Five X More have stated that they want:

1) An explanation as to why there is this disparity of maternity care for Black women and white women; and

2) Action to be taken to address this issue.

Their target is for 85% of women to receive continuity of carers, i.e. the same midwife and team, throughout pregnancy and childbirth.

If we really believe that Black Lives Matter, we MUST address disparities in healthcare for Black men and women.

My Success Workshops Were Featured!

My article on Finding Creative Solutions, about my Success Workshops, has been published in the April 2011 issue of National Nubian Networking. Click here to download your free copy now. My article is on page 24.

Click here for details of my next workshop on Saturday 16th of April.

The workshop on Saturday at Inspirational YOU went great, although it was hard work! The Inspirational YOU events are so very positive and so very inspiring. I urge you to attend the next one.

See also: Workshop to Transform Your Life.

Workshop to Transform Your Life

If you want to transform your life, you need to attend my workshop in Relaxation/ Finding Creative Solutions in London next Saturday, 26th of March. This is the first of a series of these workshops.

Click here for details of my workshops in Relaxation/Finding Creative Solutions.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Click here for my CDs for Radiant Health and Healing, which you can use to tap along with EFT.

To read more about EFT, see Achieving Fabulous Success.

How to Get What You Want in Your Relationships

My course in Relaxation and Stress Release for the African Caribbean Community runs over two days at the City Lit in London, 28th November and 5th December.

The first half of the course covers how to get what we want in every area of our lives.

The second half focuses specifically on relationships and communication.

If you have ever wondered how to get your children, partners, work colleagues and significant others to do what you want, you need this course.

This is an excellent course for parents, singles and couples. I hope you will join us.

For more information and to book, see: Improving Relationships/Improving Communication.

See also: How to Get What You Want in Your Relationships.

Connecting with Our Feelings and Needs

Click here to read about Nonviolent Communication.

This is a repeat and update of an earlier post.

I read about these killings of young people, by other young people. It surely cannot be natural for children to kill.

We need to find more love in our hearts. Sorry if this sounds airy-fairy. I am talking in purely practical terms. We need to find more love and learn how to express it better or, I fear, our species is not going to survive much longer.

We can find more love. There are methods that work. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a highly effective method. I have seen the effect it has had in my own life and I am determined to help make it available as widely as possible, particularly within African Diasporic communities.

We can use NVC to help improve our communication at home, at work, at school, with partners, loved ones, and with ourselves. Nonviolent Communication is very practical and its results are exceptional. It is used by children as young as four. It is used by people all over the world, including places where there is a history of extreme violence, such as Rwanda and Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Israel and Palestine.

Click here to find out more about Creative Communication.

Click here to read about Nonviolent Communication.

See also: How to Get Our Needs Met, NVC vs. Anger Management. These are both old posts, so the links are probably out of date.

Lama Rangdrol's Visit

I was privileged to meet Lama Rangdrol earlier this year, when he visited the London Buddhist Centre. He was fresh from giving one of the keynote speeches at the Beyond Race and Caste conference in San Francisco.

We had two meetings with him at the LBC. I asked him about how we can spread the Dharma in the Black community and spoke of my concern about the rising number of young people killing each other. Many of these murders happen in South London, and even in my neighbourhood of Camberwell, but mostly in adjoining areas such as Peckham.

Lama Rangdrol said we would need to practice for others who can't do it for themselves. Many of the young Black men he grew up with in Oakland, CA did not make itout of the ghetto alive. Those who did were often too scarred by their experience to be able to explore the life of peace and contemplation which Buddhism can offer.

I was glad to be able to meet an experienced Buddhist who is committed to exploring and demonstrating the relationship Buddhism has to the experience of people of African heritage.

We will be screening Lama Rangdrol's film, "Festival Cancelled Due to Heavy Rain", on Saturday at the LBC. Click here for more details.