"I was confused, annoyed and a bit lost."
A mother is calling for more support to address a racial imbalance in baby mortality rates.
Vaishali Bamania discovered she had womb cancer while trying for a baby and after successful treatment, she went through 18 months of IVF to conceive.
In 2019, daughter Jaya was born at 22 weeks and lived for 14 minutes.
Mrs Bamania said the government “needs to put in some resources to reduce inequalities in the health care system”.
She said: “The care was fine during my pregnancy I thought.
“I was told early on that I would be under a high-risk team because of conception with IVF.”
Mrs Bamania went for a routine 20-week scan with her husband Rahul and was expecting to have blood and urine tests before being told the tests were unnecessary.
She continued: “I wonder now if they would have found the beginnings of an infection at that point because just before 22 weeks I started experiencing some leaking.
“I didn’t know if it was normal or not so I called the hospital.”
The expecting mother was told to rest and see if it continued.
“Nothing more happened so I called back and said everything’s normal and they said ‘Oh then you’re fine, just carry on’, so we flew to Italy the next day.
“But it turned out to be an infection.
“They admitted me overnight and I called the hospital in the UK who said ‘There’s nothing we can do for you’.”
“I was confused, annoyed and a bit lost. We just didn’t know what to do.”
The couple returned to the UK the next day and went straight to hospital.
After a scan, she was told there was no amniotic fluid around the baby and she would have to give birth.
Mrs Bamania stated: “I was just in shock.”
After her daughter was born, she held her until she died.
According to baby mortality rates in the UK for 2018-20, black women were nearly four times more likely than white women to die within six weeks of giving birth, with Asian women 1.8 times more likely.
Data also showed Black and Asian babies were more likely to be stillborn or die in the neonatal period.
Mrs Bamania said: “I don’t understand why, in 2024, the statistics are still that you are more likely to experience baby loss if you are South Asian or black.
“I know a lot of work’s been done to reduce baby loss death rates across the board, but why’s it still persisting more in the South Asian and black communities?
“Nobody should be at more risk of their baby dying just because of the colour of their skin.”
“There’s nothing to bring Jaya back, but if I can help somebody else to maybe understand the warning signs, or to know how to advocate for themselves or call on the government to do more, then why shouldn’t I do that.
“I want her short life to mean something.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said:
“It is unacceptable that too many babies and their mothers are not receiving the care they deserve.
“We will take action to close the Black and Asian maternal mortality gap and tackle the unacceptable inequalities in care.”
The spokesperson added the government was “determined to ensure all women and their babies receive safe, personalised, and compassionate care from maternity and neonatal services”.
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