Across the world, approximately 810 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In addition, around 6,700 newborns die every day, amounting to 47% of all under-5 deaths. Moreover, about 2 million babies are stillborn every year, with over 40% occurring during labour.

In Scotland the Scottish Patient Safety Programme’s Maternity and Children Quality Improvement Collaborative (SPSP-MCQIC) has three programmes to improve safety in maternity, neonates and paediatric care. One of the aims of the maternity programme is to reduce the rate of stillbirths in Scotland. Since the programme started in 2013, MCQIC have supported a national aggregated reduction in the number of stillbirths by 23%. Examples of other interventions to improve safety include the development and implementation of the Perinatal Preterm Wellbeing Package, development and testing of a package to improve rates of Brochopulmonary Dysplasia in neonates, and implementation of the Maternity Early Warning Score (MEWS)

Join us on Friday 17 September and share “Why safety matters to you” using our statement card (PDF) and post on Twitter using the hashtags #WorldPatientSafetyDay and #spsp247. Don’t forget to tag us in using @ihubscot

More information about WPSD can be found on the WHO website: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2021/09/17/default-calendar/world-patient-safety-day-2021