ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief background history to the role and impact that the successive Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths (CEMD) have had in helping to improve maternal and newborn health over the past half century in the UK. All healthcare professionals who provide maternity and other services for pregnant women in the UK are justifiably proud to be part of a maternal healthcare service that places importance on the Enquiries. Although the CEMD started universal coverage in England and Wales in 1952, the concept of reviewing local series of maternal deaths was not new. Indeed, the Enquiry’s introduction was built upon a system of smaller, local enquiries initiated by concerned healthcare professionals that were already occurring in parts of the UK, usually feeding their results to the Ministries of Health. In the mid-1980s the overall mortality rate appeared to plateau, which in some quarters led to a questioning of the need for the Enquiry to continue.
