Hansard

I welcome the opportunity to mark world pre-eclampsia day, which was held on 22 May. It is an important moment that reminds us of not only the scale of the condition globally but our responsibility in Scotland to lead with compassion, evidence and action.

I am very grateful to Patricia Gibson for raising the issue and I will start by saying how sorry I am for her loss. There have been powerful personal testimonies from both Patricia Gibson from the mother’s perspective and Jack Middleton from the child’s perspective. All politics is personal and we are at our most powerful when we use our personal experiences to advocate for change.

Pre-eclampsia is a serious pregnancy-specific condition that can, typically, arise after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It happens when the placenta does not work as well as it should, leading to high blood pressure and in some cases affecting different organs in the body, as we have heard. Globally, as others have said, the picture is stark. Every year, an estimated 76,000 mothers and 500,000 babies lose their lives due to pre-eclampsia and related hypertensive conditions in pregnancy. The vast majority of those tragedies occur in low-income countries and are potentially preventable. That tells us that, in many cases, the difference between life and death is timely recognition, appropriate escalation and access to high-quality care.

Here in Scotland, maternal safety is a national priority. We maintain robust, evidence-based systems for the early detection and management of pre-eclampsia. The best start programme and the work of the maternity and neonatal safety collaborative continue to ensure early recognition of risk, consistent escalation of care and equitable access to high-quality antenatal services for all women across all parts of Scotland. However, I am certainly willing to link in with Public Health Scotland, as Patricia Gibson requested, to determine how the data that she referred to could be collected and reported.

Routine antenatal surveillance remains our first line of defence. Women are invited to attend regular midwife appointments, at which a routine review of symptoms and an assessment of blood pressure and urine is completed for all.

In 2024, the First Minister met families who had suffered the devastating loss of their babies as a result of pre-eclampsia. Together with the organisation Action on Pre-eclampsia, those families put forward the case for improved testing to prevent tragic cases such as theirs from occurring again. I am pleased to note that, since that work was established, all women in Scotland now have access to enhanced testing, which is known as placental growth factor—PlFG—testing.

We are also continuing to strengthen our systems. We are developing an updated national maternity early warning score—MEWS—to support the earlier identification of patients whose condition is deteriorating, including those with high blood pressure, and rapid and appropriate escalation to ensure that women receive the right care and treatment as quickly as possible.

We have developed new pathways, which are designed not only to improve immediate outcomes but to address the longer-term impacts of the condition and reduce the longer-term maternal risk of cardiovascular disease, in line with the Scottish Government’s ambition to improve population health.

Over recent years, our understanding of pre-eclampsia has evolved. We now know that it is not just a complication of pregnancy but a marker of future health risk. Women who experience in pregnancy hypertensive disorders such as high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia have an increased lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes, and an increased risk of premature death.

I am pleased to inform members that a short-life working group is focusing on reducing cardiovascular risk in women who experience high blood pressure in pregnancy. In 2025, that group developed a national pathway to reduce long-term cardiovascular risk. The pathway represents a significant step forward in how we support women, not just during pregnancy but across their entire life course.