Annual infant mortality rates (FOI)

​Request

Please could you provide me with the following records, for the last forty year or when records have been recorded:

1. The annual neonatal death rate (infants under the age of 1 in jersey;
2. The annual rate of infants born in jersey and being diagnosed with Cerebral palsy by the age of 3 caused by birth and not by any incident subsequent to birth;
3. The percentage of birth that end in caesarean delivery;
4. The number of incidents during labour and/or neonatal death that required a serious investigation report;
5. The annual submission to SCBU and reason for submissions; and
6. The current coverage of staff in Jersey Maternity unit and SCBU?

Clarification received:

5: “submissions” to be amended to “admissions”.

Information to be provided from 2012

Response

1. The infant mortality rates (number of infant deaths <1 year divided by the number of live births), as an annual average over each three-year period, is presented in the following link:   

Average annual infant mortality rate

Disclosure control has been applied to the data in order to protect the identity of individuals, in accordance with Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, therefore no further breakdown is available.

2. This information is not routinely centrally collected by the Government of Jersey and is therefore not held for the purposes of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

3. Percentage of births that end in caesarean delivery (C. Section Rate):

4. There have been seven incidents within the last 15 years.

5. The annual admissions to SCBU:

The Health & Community Services Department are unable to provide admission reasons without a manual review of patient notes and it is therefore estimated that to retrieve the requested data would exceed the time limit as set out in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

6. The current coverage of staff in Jersey Maternity unit and SCBU:

Midwives:
7 WTE band 6
25.8 WTE band 5
2 WTE band 4

SCBU
2 WTE Neonatal Nurses/Midwives
8 WTE Neonatal Nurses

There are currently 2 WTE vacancies for a grade 4 and a grade 5 covered by 1 bank and 1 agency

Nursery Nurses
4.4 WTE

Health Care Assistants
8.8 WTE

WTE – Whole Time Equivalent.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 25      Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2)     Information is absolutely exempt information if –
(a)     it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and
(b)     its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3)     In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.