Miscarriages twice as high for mums in Southern Trust area including South Tyrone

Almost twice as many women are seeking treatment for miscarriages in the Southern Heath Trust than in other parts of Northern Ireland.

Last year, there were 606 such admissions in the local health trust area, which includes South Tyrone, a drop from the previous year’s total of 663.

However, the figure was still the highest by some distance in Northern Ireland, with the South Eastern Trust recording the lowest number of admissions, 356.

In fact, the Southern Trust miscarriage totals have been the highest for every year since 2010. The Western Trust had the second highest total in the North last year at 419.

Although the figures are shocking, they don’t reveal the full extent of the problem as the collated figures are only for those women who seek hospital treatment for their miscarriage. For women who go to their GP nothing is recorded.

Figures from The Miscarriage Association show that more than one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. That is around a quarter of a million in the UK every year.

This is not the same as more than one in five women having miscarriages. Some women may have more than one miscarriage in the same year. And this is only the miscarriages that women are aware of. The association says that up to 50 per cent of all conceptions may end in miscarriage, but women may not even be aware that they were pregnant to begin with so the miscarriage goes unrecorded. Experts say that miscarriages are seldom caused by the behaviour of the mother.