Births, stillbirths, miscarriages and terminations 2019 to 2021 (FOI)

Request

Please advise of the following:

A

How many live births were recorded from 2019 to 2021?

B

How many stillbirths were recorded from 2019 to 2021?

C

How many miscarriages were recorded ifrom 2019 to 2021?

D

How many terminations were recorded from 2019 to 2021?

Response

A to D

The number of live births and stillbirths registered annually in Jersey can be found in the Superintendent Registrar’s Annual Statements on www.gov.je:

Superintendent Registrar Annual Statements (gov.je)

As this information is available elsewhere, Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

It should be noted that the majority of miscarriages occur outside of hospital, in the community, and will not require care through Health and Community Services (HCS) or be reported to the department at the time of occurrence. Additionally, whilst miscarriages that occur in the community may subsequently be recorded in an individual’s medical record, this information is not available in a central database. Therefore, HCS are unable to provide total figures for miscarriages on the island.

HCS holds data on miscarriages that require admission to hospital for care, including ectopic pregnancies requiring management. These cases are identified by the diagnosis codes assigned to the episode of care in the Electronic Patient Record. Admission figures for the years requested are detailed in the table below:

Data Source: Hospital Patient Administration System (TrakCare, Report CDG4G)

Data for this response is derived from reporting by discharge date. As such, patients who were admitted prior to 1 January 2019 but discharged after this date will be included. For the same reason, patients admitted prior to 31 December 2021 but discharged after this date will not be included in the numbers. 

Clinical Coding of a patient’s admission is carried out after discharge from hospital. Data is incomplete for the full time period in question, and consequently, figures may be subject to change as Clinical Coding of admissions continues and completion levels increase.

Figures for termination of pregnancy are published by Public Health Intelligence on www.gov.je:

Births and fertility (gov.je)

As this information is available elsewhere, Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Article applied

Article 23 - Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.