Baby Loss Awareness Week is a time for everyone in the baby loss community and beyond to come together, to remember our much-loved and missed babies, and raise awareness of pregnancy and baby loss. The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology will come together for a 5km walk on 15/10/22 to fundraise for the important work of SANDS.

Head of Department and SANDS Ambassador Professor Gordon Smith had the following to say on the eve of this year's Baby Loss Awareness Week.

"Stillbirth has been a focus of research in the Department for more than 20 years. Some of our previous studies in 2002-2004 led to identification of low PAPP-A in early pregnancy as a predictor of stillbirth and enhanced surveillance for women with low levels of PAPP-A is now a feature of routine care in the NHS. In 2008 we started the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction Study (POPS) and in 2020 we embarked on POPS2, studies which aim to identify tests which can predict complications associated with stillbirth. Our work aims to modernise methods for assessing the risk of complications of pregnancy associated with dysfunction of the key organ which sustains the baby in the womb, i.e. the placenta. Researchers in the department study this at every level, from the molecular factors involved in normal and abnormal function of the placenta, through to clinical studies which aim to develop new tests to predict and to detect the placental dysfunction which causes many stillbirths. This week we acknowledge the millions of parents who have lost a baby, but every week we are working to try and reduce the number who will experience this tragedy in the future."