Florence Eshalomi MP visits our maternity service

Florence Eshalomi, MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, visited Guy's and St Thomas' maternity unit to meet members of the team and find out about the service which safely delivers nearly 6,400 babies each year.

During the visit, which took place during Black Maternal Mental Health Week, Florence heard about how we care for pregnant women and families from our diverse local communities and those referred to us from across London, and even nationally due to their need for more specialist care.

The maternity service at St Thomas' Hospital is co-located with Evelina London Children's Hospital, which has a neonatal intensive care unit. This means we are well placed to support pregnant women requiring extra care for babies in the womb, where it's been identified during the pregnancy that the baby may be born early or with a complex condition and need immediate care after birth.

The Trust also has extensive experience of supporting pregnant women living with complex conditions, including sickle cell disease. Pregnancies for Black women with sickle cell disease are high risk as there can be complications caused by the disease. We are playing a leading role in research which aims to develop understanding and improve support and treatment for women with the condition during pregnancy.

Gina Brockwell, Chief Midwife at Guy's and St Thomas', said: "We were delighted to welcome Florence to St Thomas' Hospital to find out more about the way we support pregnant women from a wide range of backgrounds within our hospital and community services, some of whom have a wide range of underlying medical conditions.

"We care passionately about ensuring that every pregnancy and birth is special and supported with the utmost care, expertise and compassion. We recognise that inequalities in maternity outcomes exist particularly for Black and Asian women and want to do everything we can to eliminate them.

"It's important to us that our teams have the skills and expertise to identify early if women or families in our care have any additional needs or are facing additional challenges, such as around mental health, and that we help them access the support they need. And we have a strong programme of research that helps us to improve outcomes for women with conditions such as sickle cell disease or who are at risk of preterm delivery."

Florence Eshalomi MP said: "I'd like to thank the maternity team at St Thomas' Hospital for welcoming me to the unit. It was great to meet members of the team and to see for myself their passion to provide high quality clinical care, identify any additional support needs, such as around mental health and to help pregnant women and families access the support they need. Health inequalities impact women across my diverse Vauxhall and Camberwell Green constituency and the wider South London region, so it's good to see the work going in to addressing them. It was also very interesting to hear about the important research taking place in the service and I look forward to keeping up-to-date with this as it progresses."