THE latest report from the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) highlights a growing challenge for the NHS.
Its third annual State of Maternity Services Report shows Scotland has the fastest-growing number of women in their forties in the UK having babies. The number of women giving birth aged between 40 and 44 in Scotland rose by 71% from 2001 to 2012, from 1224 to 2093.
This is a trend that will continue. Women are marrying later, and increasingly delaying their pregnancies in order to continue to progress their careers. While this means new parents are likely to be financially more secure as they start their families, delaying motherhood has its risks.
The pattern will place increasing strain on the health service as midwives and doctors increasingly deal with more complex births.
The RCM states that the Scottish Government has resisted any temptation to use a small reduction in the overall number of births (3.4% over four years) as an excuse to cut midwife numbers. This is to be welcomed, but we must ensure that maternity services continue to be given the highest priority.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article