Group B Strep babies at risk of meningitis, sepsis and pneumonia

The number of newborn babies developing life-threatening Group B Strep infections is continuing to rise, it has been revealed.

Despite adherence to a ‘national prevention strategy’ by medical teams, the number of babies contracting GBS which can cause sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia, is still growing.

On average one newborn a day develops GBS, one baby a week will die from it and one baby a fortnight who survives the infection will be left with life-long disabilities.

But while medics don’t routinely swab pregnant mothers for the infection, a risk based approach introduced in 2003 was expected to reduce the number of babies developing the infection by 50 to 60%.

But figures from Public Health England show the number of infections nationally has increased by 32% since those guidelines were introduced.

Infection rates are not published by county or individual hospital.

Jane Plumb is chief executive of charity Group B Strep Support, which wants pregnant women to be given Group B Strep information as part of routine antenatal care and be offered a test late in pregnancy.

She is supporting a call by The Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists’ for a need to update guidelines.

She explained: “The current prevention strategy has clearly failed. The key focus must be on establishing why the rate of GBS infection is continuing to rise despite a well-established prevention strategy intended to do precisely the opposite and what changes need to be made to reverse this rise.”

Countries including the United States, Spain and Italy offer women testing for GBS carriage in late pregnancy and all, the charity says, have reported falls in infection rates of over 80 per cent.

And a recent screening trial of over 5,300 mothers at Northwick Park Hospital in London resulted in a large reduction in cases of newborns being infected with the bacteria.

Dr Gopal Rao, consultant microbiologist at the trust, said: “We have seen an 80% reduction in the numbers of babies being born with GBS from one in every 1,000 births in unscreened mothers to one in every 5,000 births in screened mothers.”

The charity says, that while it has previously found grassroots support among doctors and midwifes for testing individual women, guided by risk factors or maternal request, the latest report found only a small percentage of maternity units state this as policy.

Facts about Group B Strep

Group B Strep is the most common cause of life-threatening infection in newborn babies and of meningitis in babies up to three months.

It is passed from mother to baby around labour and birth.

20-30% of women carry Group B Strep, without symptoms and usually without harm.

Most Group B Strep infections in newborn babies can be prevented by offering intravenous antibiotics from the start of labour to pregnant women.

The ‘gold standard’ sensitive test for group B Strep carriage called the ECM (enriched culture medium) test, costs the NHS £11 per test. Few NHS trusts, says GBSS, offer the ECM test, despite there being a UK standard for the test since 2006. A number of private laboratories offer home-testing packs for around £35.

GBSS has launched a campaign Why Guess When You Can Test to try and give health professionals easier access to the ECM test.