Over tenth of pregnant women in England continue to smoke

Shanna McGoldrick
WVoN co-editor 

According to recently released NHS data, 13.4% of mothers in England were smokers at the time of giving birth in the final quarter of 2011/12.

Although an improvement on the 2010/11 figure of 13.5%, the results show that there is still a long way to go if the Tobacco Control Plan, a government initiative, is to reach its target of 11% of deliveries by smokers by 2015.

And although the national average shows signs of abating slowly but surely over the past few years, the regional tables highlight staggering differences in the percentage of pregnant women who smoke across the country.

According to the data, the worst offending town is Blackpool, where a shocking 30.3% of women continued to smoke up until giving birth.

The area with the lowest percentage was the London borough of Brent, where the figures showed that this was the case in just 2.8% of deliveries.

The North in general fared worse than the South in the study, with data submitted by each Northern Health Authority consistently showing higher records of pregnant smokers than in the South.

The North East has the highest percentage of pregnant smokers, with an average of 20.2%. Compare this to the 6.1% in London, and it becomes clear that something is amiss.

Speaking to the Guardian, Louise Silverton of the Royal College of Midwives, claimed that the north-south divide in the findings “highlights the gaping health inequalities in access to appropriate public health services.”

In an introduction to the findings, which can be found here, the NHS information centre stressed: “Smoking remains one of the few modifiable risk factors in pregnancy. It can cause a range of serious health problems, including lower birth weight, pre-term birth, placental complications and perinatal mortality.”