FAQ's

Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK) is the collaboration appointed by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership to run the national Maternal, Newborn and Infant Clinical Outcome Review Programme (MNI-CORP).

The MBRRACE-UK programme has two main arms. The maternal programme is led from the University of Oxford and the perinatal programme is led by the University of Leicester. Other members of the MBRRACE-UK collaboration work at the University of Birmingham, Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands and National Maternity Voices.

MBRRACE-UK has two main functions:

1. Conducting national surveillance that enables accurate, timely reporting on the rate of maternal, stillbirth and neonatal deaths in the UK
2. Running confidential enquiries that evaluate the care received by mothers and babies in order to identify lessons and produce national recommendations that can drive improvement

The findings of MBRRACE-UK are published in annual reports that can be accessed on the reports page.

Deaths that should be reported to MBRRACE-UK are all women who die in the UK (or the Republic of Ireland):

• during pregnancy, or
• in the 12 months after the end of pregnancy.

This is regardless of how the pregnancy ends or the circumstances of the woman's death.

​To notify the MBRRACE-UK maternal team of a death please download the Notification Form. This form should be completed and returned using our SECURE email:

Secure NHSMail: orh-tr.mbrrace@nhs.net

If you need to speak to a member of the team, please call us on:

Tel: 01865 289715

To align with international figures, maternal mortality rates include only deaths that occurred during pregnancy or up to six weeks after the end of pregnancy in the UK. Only deaths that were directly related to or affected by pregnancy are included in these figures.

As the number of maternal deaths in the UK is small, maternal mortality rates for the UK are calculated using three years' worth of data to identify meaningful trends.

Deaths eligible for inclusion in MBRRACE-UK's perinatal surveillance are:

• Late fetal losses – the baby is born at 22 or 23 completed weeks' gestation showing no signs of life, irrespective of when the death occurred.
• Stillbirths – the baby is born from 24 completed weeks' gestation (or from 400g where an accurate estimate of gestation is not available) showing no signs of life, irrespective of when the death occurred.
• Neonatal deaths – the death of a live born baby born from 20 completed weeks' gestation (or from 400g where an accurate estimate of gestation is not available) occurring before 28 completed days after birth.

The eligibility criteria for notification to MBRRACE-UK is based on the baby's gestational age at birth. This means that babies born from 22 completed weeks' gestational age showing no signs of life must be reported to MBRRACE-UK regardless of when the death occurred.

Terminations of pregnancy resulting in a registered stillbirth (from 24 completed weeks' gestation) or neonatal death (from 20 completed weeks' gestation) should also be notified to MBRRACE-UK. Information about terminations of pregnancy is collected in order to exclude these cases from MBRRACE-UK reported statistics on perinatal mortality.

All eligible deaths should be reported via the MBRRACE-UK online reporting system.

Please refer to the MBRRACE-UK Perinatal death data collection form for details of the data that will be requested.

In response to requests from Trusts in England to reduce the amount of duplicate reporting of perinatal deaths, a new process for notifying neonatal deaths to Child Death Overview Panels (CDOPs) has been developed, called Cascade. As is currently the case, information from CDOPs will then flow to the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD).

Cascade combines the notification of neonatal deaths to MBRRACE-UK and CDOPs into a single step.

Cascade will be launched on 8th January 2025 and the new process will apply in England from this date.

Guidance for Trusts in England about Cascade is available to download:
Cascade guidance

Guidance for CDOPs about Cascade is available on the NCMD website.

Access to the MBRRACE-UK reporting system is only available to registered members of staff of trusts/health boards that provides maternity or neonatal services. To register to use the system you will need to complete the MBRRACE-UK registration form and have it signed by a senior member of staff in your organisation, such as the Head of Midwifery or a Consultant. The form should be returned to the MBRRACE-UK Office by emailing the perinatal team: mbrracele@npeu.ox.ac.uk.

To view helpful videos on how to access and use the online reporting system please click here: https://www.npeu.ox.ac.uk/mbrrace-uk/perinatal-programme/training-videos

Once you register to use the online reporting system you should receive an e-mail from us with your personal login details and further information on how to access and use the system. If you have submitted a registration form to MBRRACE-UK, but have not yet received an e-mail with instructions for accessing the online system, please contact the MBRRACE-UK perinatal team directly mbrracele@npeu.ox.ac.uk.

Access to the MBRRACE-UK reporting system is only available to registered members of staff at a trust or health board which provides maternity or neonatal services. In some limited circumstances access may be possible for someone working outside the NHS. Please contact the MBRRACE-UK team directly with the details of your enquiry.

As MBRRACE-UK holds personal data, a very high level of security has to be in place not only for the user data entry at the front end, but also throughout the data capture and storage. The reporting system meets the standards required to protect patient information and can be used in NHS and non-NHS facilities across the UK. The system will not pose any threat to your current applications or work and should have little or no impact on any other IT deployment.​​​​​

The MBRRACE-UK Technical Manual contains full details of the statistical methods used to calculate the perinatal mortality rates.

Yes. Individuals have a right to ask public bodies, such as the University of Oxford, for copies of information held about them. To learn more, please visit the Information for mothers, parents and families page

MBRRACE-UK does not collect information primarily for the purposes of research but recognise that there are important research questions that can be answered using the information collected. With appropriate permissions, researchers are able to apply to access MBRRACE-UK data for research or evaluation studies designed to address important questions about the health and care of mothers and babies, and the outcomes of pregnancy.

Applications for data access must go through the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP).​​​​​