Ruth Alexander
speaker
4,250 appearances
120 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2011
last heard Aug 2018
Ruth Alexander’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So comparing us with the best is an easy way to make the UK look bad and create headlines.
But there's reason to believe that the statistics are making the UK look worse than it is and Belarus look better.
Well, because we take counting deaths in pregnancy very seriously as a nation, we don't just look at death certificates to find out how many mothers are dying in pregnancy, as many countries do.
We ask hospital staff, coroners, and we use birth registration data to follow up on mothers in their first year after birth.
And because we're so thorough, it makes our numbers look high in comparison to other countries.
Well, its record looks so good that it seems suspicious.
It's not just the UK they're doing better than.
It's rich countries with really top-notch health care like Switzerland and Sweden.
Now, the World Health Organization, whose figures these are, they told me that it's actually really hard to be sure of the numbers coming out of a country as small as Belarus.
You know, it's only got a population of about 9 million, and small numbers tend to bounce around a lot.
The WHO has relied on the deaths registration data for Belarus and then adjusted them to allow for the fact that death certificates in any country, not just Belarus...
death certificates don't always mention that someone was pregnant.
But it's possible, the WHO says, it's possible they've not adjusted by enough.
Well, Oxford University, which carries out all the investigations into maternal deaths in the UK, says there are only a very small number of countries which are as thorough as we are.
And that is France, Ireland and the Netherlands.
So they say, you know, it's only really worth comparing us to them if you want to get an accurate idea.
Now, our death rates are identical to France and to Ireland's and they're a bit higher than the Netherlands.
But even that might be a statistical anomaly, apparently, because
The Netherlands may not be as rigorous, including death from as many causes as we are.
And it's also worth thinking about what maternal mortality means.
Showing 161–180 of 4,250 · page 9 of 213
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