One National Health Service a midwife told a black woman asking for painkillers while she was having a miscarriage that “you guys have a high pain threshold,” she claims.
It is one of several cases in which black and Asian women were subjected to racist treatment and ridicule by maternity staff before losing a child.
The revelations come as the official numbers show child mortality it is twice as high in ethnic minorities.
The conclusions were supported by the report on NHS maternity care led by Donna Ockenden, a senior midwife, who documented repeated cases of discriminatory behavior by “staff imitating accents, mannerisms and laughing” at ethnic minority women.
A freedom of information request to NHS England revealed that in 2022-23, the stillbirth rate for babies of black mothers was double the rate for white mothers, while the rate for Asian babies was almost as high.
Bhavna Bhargava, a British woman of Indian origin, lost her son, Joshan, seven and a half hours after he was born on May 27, 2019.
She said when she arrived at Epsom Hospital she told a nurse she was bleeding profusely and showed her a blood-soaked sanitary pad.
She said: “I said to the nurse, ‘This is how much blood I lost when I got to the hospital. It doesn’t feel normal.’”
The nurse told him it was “perfectly normal,” according to Bhargava. Hours later, her uterus ruptured 30 cm, causing her baby to slip into her abdomen.
‘I was not heard’
She stated: “From the first moment I went to the hospital, I was not listened to and my concerns were not taken seriously.”
Bhargava said her husband saw a midwife “roll her eyes at him” when he raised concerns about her extreme pain during labor.
The coroner’s inquest found that “a delay in recognizing fetal distress contributed more than minimally to Joshan’s death”.
Bhargava said she believed women of Indian origin were stereotyped as having an “extremely low” pain threshold and always preferring Caesarean about natural birth.
A black woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was repeatedly called “you people” by maternity staff at another hospital in the London area.
‘I’m in a lot of pain’
She said: “I was just a person requesting assistance for my medical condition.
She suffered her first miscarriage in 2011, when she said she was told, “You black people have a very high pain threshold,” after she asked for painkillers.
Then she replied: “How many people are in this room? What do you mean by ‘you’?” she said she was told all black people were “resilient.”
She said, “Actually, I’m not. I’m in a lot of pain. And I’ve been saying that for hours.”
Between 2011 and 2017, she had five miscarriages without knowing what caused them.
‘Black women are scared’
Alicia Burnett, founder of Black Baby Loss Awareness Week, said: “Black women who are experiencing miscarriages, or who have had one before, or are pregnant, are scared. They are afraid to wonder if they will be mistreated again.
“Despite the argument that the majority of nurses are people of color, this does not exclude acts of racism. If a person is educated within a system that is impacted by institutional racism, they will work in a way that does not treat everyone the same.”
The Ockenden Maternity Review – the largest inquiry of its kind in the history of the NHS – found a lack of communication between staff and affected patients particularly “ethnic minority women”.
‘Systematic racism’
The Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society, the charity, said there was a “well-documented problem of systematic racism” experienced by many black and Asian women and mothers from families from other ethnic backgrounds as they navigated motherhood and neonatal care.
An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is committed to ensuring that all women, regardless of their ethnicity, receive high-quality care before, during and after pregnancy, and all maternity and neonatal systems have published plans to action to help ensure that care is equitable. for all mothers, babies and families.”
A spokesperson for Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust said: “Our deepest sympathies go out to Mrs Bhargava and her family for their loss, and we would like to apologize again for the distress caused.
“We have since reviewed our service and made improvements, including implementing processes to assess blood loss volumes and raising concerns about equipment issues with the manufacturer and the MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency]that have already been resolved.”
