Lack of interpreters contributed to deaths of 34 babies last year
MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy calls for ringfenced cash to tackle problem as research by National Child Mortality Database finds issue is worsening
A lack of interpreters contributed to the deaths of 48 children in England in 2024-25, including 34 babies under a year old — more than double the figures from the previous year.
The data was collated and released by the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) from reports by the Child Death Review — a multi-agency panel that investigates the death of every child in England, looking beyond the medical causes of death to consider wider factors.
In 2023-24, a lack of translators contributed to the deaths of 21 children, including 16 under a year old, the NCMD found.
While the NCMD does not disclose the settings in which the deaths occurred, language barriers in healthcare have previously been identified as a particular issue in maternity services. They can also hinder patients’ understanding of their conditions and ability to consent to treatment — issues that were illuminated by the 2021 death of Rana Abdelkarim following a catastrophic bleed after giving birth.
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The lack of interpreters within maternity settings in Britain is especially likely to affect Muslim families. Data from the 2021 census analysed by Hyphen showed that more than 340,000 Muslims in England and Wales speak little to no English, including more than 100,000 women and girls aged 15 to 49. Only Christians speak little to no English in larger numbers.
“This study shows that the lack of interpretation services may ultimately prove fatal,” said Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who founded the all-party parliamentary group for Black maternal health. “We know language barriers are an impediment to women accessing maternity services, making it harder for them to register for antenatal care, attend routine checkups and understand when they may need to seek urgent help.”
Sylvia Stoianova, NCMD’s deputy programme director, said: “Our previous analysis has shown that language barriers at all stages of care, and especially maternity and mental health, lead to poor communication, reduced trust and disengagement from services.”
The NHS has a legal responsibility to provide equitable access to all patients regardless of language and background. Integrated Care Boards are responsible for ensuring access to interpretation services.
But although nearly a third of babies in England and Wales in 2022 were born to mothers from outside the country, interpretation services in maternity and paediatric services remain patchy.
“Family members are commonly used as interpreters, and quite often that family member is a child,” said Stoianova. “There are cases of children translating for their parents while their sibling is dying, which is really inappropriate.”
As well as exposing the child to psychological harm, research shows that requiring a child to act as a translator hinders communication with the patient. Children often do not know appropriate medical vocabulary — a problem also present when the role is taken by an adult family member — while parents in this situation might omit details of their condition to avoid embarrassing or distressing the child.
The findings come two years after the BBC revealed that a lack of interpretation services had contributed to at least 80 babies dying or suffering serious brain injuries in England between 2018 and 2022.
In Abdelkarim’s case, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) found there had been no effective communication from hospital staff and identified delays in calling for specialist help. Abdelkarim had recently arrived in the UK from Sudan.
Last year, maternity research group MBRRACE-UK analysed data on a randomised sample of 25 recently-immigrated mothers whose babies had died in the UK during or shortly after birth in 2022.
While all but one of the women were noted as needing an interpreter, analysis showed that none were provided during half of their antenatal appointments, while in 10% a family member or friend had acted as an interpreter. A trained interpreter was present in only 6% of the appointments, while a telephone interpreter was utilised in 21% of the consultations.
A September report published by the charities Sands and Tommy’s on reducing neonatal mortality echoed these findings. One NHS midwife told researchers: “Interpreting services are sadly seen as a nice-to-have rather than an absolute essential.”
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A number of refugee mothers surveyed for the report described interpreters not being available. One said: “I didn’t have any interpreter, and I couldn’t even ask for help when I had pains… I didn’t have any epidural. I wanted to ask for pain relief medication, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.”
Language barriers are the “bread and butter” of the work done by Doctors of the World, an international charity working in the UK, said its policy and advocacy manager, Valentina D’Orazio.
Despite the law and NHS guidelines obliging surgeries and hospitals to provide interpretation services, many providers are simply not aware of how to efficiently schedule an interpreter, D’Orazio said. Funding is also a barrier.
“NHS and GP practices are already under immense pressure and the NHS does not allocate any budget specifically for interpretation services,” she said. “This makes it very logistically difficult for surgeries to provide this service.”
Doctors of the World is calling for the creation of a dedicated interpretation budget, a call backed by Ribeiro-Addy. “Accessing healthcare is a right, no matter what language you speak,” she said.
The Department for Health and Social Care was approached for comment.
