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Lack of Home Birth Data 'Frustrating'

Nobody knows how safe it is to have a home birth, because the Health Ministry can't tell how many women do it. It's a data gap that's frustrating maternity providers and managers such as midwife and MidCentral District Health Board maternity adviser Cheryl Benn.

 

Authorities are alerted if something goes wrong with a birth, including a home birth, but nobody can put those cases in the context of how many home births went without a hitch.

An Official Information Act request to the ministry could only extract that there were 2222 home births throughout New Zealand in 2005, 2262 in 2006, and 1236 in the first half of 2007. The rest of the request was refused.

Data collected from lead maternity carer (LMC) claim forms before July 2007 didn't record the district where home births happened, and since then, the forms haven't asked the LMCs or midwives to state if the birth was at home.

"It's a quality and safety issue," said Dr Benn. "There is a concern ... that hospital births may be safer, but we need hard evidence to say whether that is so."