‘Considerable strain’ for maternity services as Unicef predicts 643,000 babies to be born in UK in nine months since pandemic declared

‘We need to consider the needs of babies and their families and protect and support the services that work with them,’ says Unicef official

Women’s Correspondent

Thursday 07 May 2020 19:27 BST

A nurse gives a baby some medicine at a UK medical centre. Globally, 116 million births are expected in the nine months since the pandemic was declared (Getty)

Maternity services in the UK are facing “considerable strain”, with the 643,000 babies due to be born in the nine months following the start of the coronavirus crisis set to suffer “harsh realities” as a result of the pandemic, a United Nations agency has warned.

Unicef, the UN body which provides humanitarian aid to children around the world, said an estimated 116 million babies will be born across the globe in the 40 weeks after Covid-19 was announced a pandemic on 11 March.

The agency raised concerns the babies and mothers would have to cope with health systems and medical supply chains around the world which are acutely struggling under the pressure of the coronavirus emergency.

It comes after The Independent reported pregnancy services in the UK were finding it difficult to manage with the coronavirus outbreak, with some maternity units 30 or 40 per cent down on staff and substantial numbers of birth centres being turned into Covid-19 units.

Home births are also being cancelled due to maternity units having staff off sick or self-isolating – with frontline service providers warning the secondary impact of the coronavirus emergency could put pregnant women’s health at risk.

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

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1/13Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said.

Photos Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said.

Reuters

Unicef has now warned that new mothers and newborns across the world will have to cope with lockdowns and curfews, health centres being deluged with the Covid-19 crisis, supply and equipment shortages, and a dearth of properly trained birth attendants due to midwives and other medical staff being relocated to help fight coronavirus.

The organisation argues Covid-19 chaos places millions of pregnant mothers and their babies around the world at substantial risk.

Anna Kettley, director of programmes at Unicef UK, said: “In the UK, our maternity services are coping as well as they can – but are also under considerable strain. This is a worrying time for everyone, especially so for pregnant women and new parents who can find having a baby isolating at the best of times.

“During this pandemic, we need to consider the needs of babies and their families and protect and support the services that work with them. Maternity and health services need clear guidance on how they can swiftly and safely return to offering high-quality face-to-face support to new and expecting mums.

“This includes how additional support can be put in place to mitigate the impacts of social distancing, particularly on the most vulnerable families, such as more personal protective equipment for midwives and health visitors, increased testing, and technology to support remote visits.”

The prediction of 643,000 babies born in the UK in nine months represents a noticeable spike in the UK birth rate – in 2018, 731,210 babies were born across the whole year.

The highest predicted numbers of births in the nine-month period of the Covid-19 emergency is claimed by India, where 20.1 million babies are expected to be born, followed by 13.5 million in China, 6.4 million in Nigeria, 5 million in Pakistan and 4 million in Indonesia.

While the Unicef forecast for births in 2020 already shows the rate is likely to increase as a result of the pandemic, the actual number of births during this period could be greater; a recent report by the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency (UNFPA) predicted there will be an extra seven million unintended pregnancies if coronavirus disruption carries on for six months.

An estimated 2.8 million pregnant women and newborns die every year – with one dying every 11 seconds due to factors which were generally preventable – prior to the Covid-19 crisis, but Unicef argues this problem could be exacerbated by the pandemic.

Commenting on the new research, Maria Booker, of Birthrights, a UK maternity care charity, said: “Babies do not stop being born in a pandemic and pregnant women have the right to a safe and positive birth regardless of coronavirus. That’s why it is essential that the government protects the resources available to maternity services during this period.”

The chief medical officer in the UK has said all women expecting babies are in a vulnerable group and the NHS states pregnant women could be at higher risk from coronavirus and should only be leaving home for very limited reasons.

Pregnancy support helplines are experiencing a massive spike in distressed pregnant women asking for urgent help – with Birthrights finding enquiries to its advice line in March were up by 464 per cent in comparison to March last year.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives have told women there is no evidence to suggest pregnant women are at greater risk from coronavirus.

“[This self-isolation for 12 weeks] is a precautionary measure to reduce the theoretical risk to the baby’s growth and risk of preterm if the mother becomes unwell,” the organisations said.

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