Over 75,000 people signed a Royal College of Midwives’ petition for 5,000 more midwives and have called on the Government to take action to recruit more midwives.
Recent statistics show that there were 688,120 live births in England last year, up over 124,000 since the start of the baby boom in 2001. Over the last decade, the number of births in the country is up by over 22%. Over the same period, however, the number of midwives has risen by less than 17%, compounding a shortage of midwives that already existed in 2001.
