Labour is blaming the reason for women not giving up smoking during pregnancy on Tory cuts to NHS ‘stop-smoking’ services; stop-smoking services have been cut by £2 per person.
Smoking whilst pregnant is linked to a 25% increase in cot deaths and babies suffering the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.
The shadow Health Secretary, Jon Ashworth, has detailed NHS partnerships that have above the national average (10.6%) of mums-to-be who smoke: Humber, Coast and Vale has the highest rates with 16.9%, while Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin is on 16.5%. Lincolnshire is at 16.4% and Derbyshire at 16.1%. In 2014/15 roughly 19,000 pregnant women were using NHS ‘stop-smoking services’.
Full article in The Mirror, 6 July 2019