How does the UK compare to other European countries?

It’s hard to compare the UK to other parts of Europe because different countries have different definitions for what a stillbirth is. Sweden and Luxembourg, for instance, define a stillbirth as a baby born still after 28 weeks of pregnancy; in the UK and in the Netherlands it’s defined as after 24 weeks, but in Portugal, Finland and Estonia, a stillbirth is defined as a baby born still after 22 weeks[1].

Systems for collecting information are also different in each country. In France, for instance, all terminations are included in the stillbirth statistics.

When adjustments are made to the stillbirth rates across Europe so that they can more easily be compared to each other, the UK rates appear somewhere in the middle: not the worst in Europe but not the best either.

There are similar discrepancies in collecting data for neonatal deaths which make comparisons difficult. Some countries, such as France for instance, do not record babies who are born less than 500g in their neonatal statistics; countries in the UK, however, record all babies born who take a breath regardless of their size.

Roughly speaking, however, rates of neonatal mortality across Europe range from 2 to 5 per 1000 babies born alive; and the UK again finds itself somewhere in the middle[1].

^{[1] European Perinatal Health Report 2008 available from www.europeristat.com}