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ONS Publishes Stillbirth / Neonatal Mortality / Infant Mortality Statistics

Today the government published the latest figures stillbirth in England; for 2017. Key points, comparing with equivalent 2016 figures:1

Infant mortality (under one-year-olds)

  • Infant mortality decreased by 0.6% (from 2,651 to 2,636)
  • Infant mortality increased from 3.8 to 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births
  • Infant mortality amongst babies with birthweight of 2.5kg was 34.7 per 1000 live births, an increase of 5.8% from 2016.

Neonatal mortality (under 28-day-olds)

  • 2.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2017 (1,903 cases), rising 0.1 per year since 2014.

Stillbirth

  • 2873 stillbirths in 2017; 4.2 per 1,000 births. Down slightly from 4.4 in 2016.

Looking a little deeper

The first of the main points on the ONS website1 is that infant deaths (babies less than one year old) have decreased by 0.6%. The apparent contradiction with their second point – that infant mortality has increased from 3.8 to 3.9 deaths per 1,000 live births – indicates that the fall in numbers of deaths is chiefly connected to the falling birth rate. The number of live births in the UK decreased by 2.5% from 2016 to 20172.

The summary1 congratulates the government for improving infant mortality figures up to 2014 following the successful implementation of recommendations in a policy report “Why Children Die”3. However, this report was published in 2014, since which time, both neonatal and infant deaths have increased by 0.3 per 1,000 live births (to 2.8 and 3.9 respectively). It is disappointing that this new report encourages us to disregard these most recent findings.

There is no good news in these headline figures.

The findings highlight the urgent need to improve treatment for premature infants. Genesis Research Trust is funding research into the causes of stillbirth and preterm birth, in order to identify improvements to medical practice that the government might then chose to implement.

Endnotes

  1. “Child and infant mortality in England and Wales: 2017”
  2. 679,106 live births in England and Wales in 2017; the lowest figure since 2006: “Births in England and Wales: 2017”
  3. “Why children die: death in infants, children, and young people in the UK Part A”