WARNING: This article addresses sensitive topics such as stillbirth and infant mortality.

While 33 weeks pregnant with her first child, Sydney nurse Nerida Rosenthal became alarmed when she realized she hadn’t felt her baby move for some time.

“It was a hectic day at work,” she recalled.

“In the afternoon, I took a moment to sit down and realized, ‘I haven’t really been noticing any movements.’

Though national statistics on stillbirths track deaths from 20 weeks of gestation onward, there has been a positive shift in cases occurring after 28 weeks, according to Flenady.

“We’ve observed a decline in this particular group,” Flenady noted.

“The average annual rate reduction reveals a 3.1 per cent decrease in late gestation stillbirth rates in the decade to 2022.”

A key stillbirth prevention strategy in the National Stillbirth Action and Implementation Plan has been the rollout of a Safer Baby Bundle in higher-risk communities and clinical settings through Stillbirth CRE.

The bundle helps clinicians identify women at a higher risk for stillbirth and provides strategies for their care.

Modelled on the UK’s National Health Service’s (NHS) Saving Babies’ Lives Care, the bundle has shown promising early results, Flenady said.

“Pre-COVID Victorian data show a 21 per cent reduction in stillbirths occurring at 28 weeks’ gestation or more where the Safer Baby Bundle has been embedded.”

Lack of real-time data hinders efforts

One major factor hampering the efforts to reduce the stillbirth rate is the lack of real-time data, Flenady said.

There is currently a three-year delay in the release of stillbirth statistics by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

“Access to timely, comprehensive data limits the ability to measure, in real time, the impact of prevention initiatives or other factors that influence stillbirth rates,” Flenady said.

“In addition, there is a two-year delay between the occurrence of a stillbirth and its inclusion in data sets made available for analysis.”