The Health Secretary admitted she experienced ‘the dark corners of the NHS’ when expecting her son, as she vowed to improve maternity care.
Victoria Atkins said she was determined to stop women ‘facing the fear’ she went through when she was about to give birth in 2011.
Speaking at the Women’s Health Summit in London, Ms Atkins, a type 1 diabetes sufferer, told how complications at the end of her pregnancy left her sharing a ward with new mothers suffering ‘excruciating pain’ and birth trauma.
This “frightening” experience gave her a personal insight into the “very worrying” situation that too many women face.
She said: ‘For me this is personal. The NHS diagnosed me with diabetes at the age of three. And so I’ve seen the very best of the NHS, but I’ve also seen some dark corners.
Health Minister Victoria Atkins said she was determined to prevent women from ‘facing the fear’ she went through when she was about to give birth in 2011
‘But one of the dark corners was that when I was pregnant, the doctors in the room will understand that pregnancy from type 1 diabetes can be a very medical process. And then there came a point in the pregnancy where it became clear that the baby had to be born early.
‘And so I was rushed to hospital and the hospital which had done an astonishingly good job simply did not have the facilities at that time to care for someone who was very early in pregnancy but also with complications.
‘So they put me in a ward with women who had just given birth, literally come from the theater and had had very traumatic experiences.
“You will understand how deeply disturbing and dare I say frightening it was to lie on that board with women who were having a hellish experience, who were in pain.”
The event marked the second year of the Women’s Health Strategy, a ten-year blueprint that aims to break down the barriers women face in healthcare, with Ms Atkins describing it as a ‘feminist Christmas’.
She set out policies to boost maternity care, including a £50 million fund to improve outcomes, and said she wanted maternity care that every mother can rely on.
Other points include better care for menstrual problems, more women’s health centers offering more treatments, improving fairness and tackling inequality and inequality, and more research into women’s health needs.
She described her experiences and told the meeting of doctors and women’s health activists that she is determined to improve maternity care.
She added: “Looking back. I know everyone did their best, but I really want to make sure that women who are expecting and who find that they need some extra help, that they are not in that situation and don’t do that, that they are not confronted deal with the fear I encountered.
“And like I say, I absolutely understand, and it’s very personal to me.
It comes after a report last week found that women are dying during pregnancy, childbirth and the weeks afterwards at the same rate as 20 years ago.
Experts say the upward trend is the most compelling evidence yet that the failures now “cover the entire maternity system” and “not just involve one or two hospitals.”
Highlighting the report, Ms Atkins said that in the three years between 2020 and 2022 there had been 293 deaths of women during pregnancy or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy.
She said: ‘That number means 293 families are mourning the profound loss of a mother who will also be someone’s daughter, partner, wife, sister or friend, and their babies who have lived while their loss is indescribable.
“They will never know the hugs from their mothers or the sound of her laughter, or the boundless love we have for our children.
‘With all these deaths linked to poor maternity care, many deaths will be too. And this has got to stop.”