NHS fails to use most effective screening for Down's Syndrome

Dr Anne Mackie, the head of the UK's NHS, has disclosed in an interview with the Guardian newspaper that an estimated 146 healthy fetuses are aborted each year in the attempt to detect those with genetic conditions.

This number is thought to be higher than it should be because most hospitals in the England do not provide women with the screening that has been identified by the NHS as the most effective in detecting Down Syndrome. The combined test that is recommended by the NHS is only used in about 30 per cent of hospitals, meaning that 70 per cent of hospitals are using a method that is more likely to give a 'false positive' result.

The combined test is performed between weeks 10 and 14 weeks of pregnancy. It involves an ultrasound scan and a blood test to measure the Nuchal Translucency (NT), which is a fluid pocket located behind the fetus' neck. The chance of Down Syndrome increases in correlation with the size of the NT.

Unusually for the NHS, the problem is rooted not in funding but in the lack of sonographers, who are responsible for performing ultrasound scans. The NHS was hoping to offer every woman in the country the combined test by the end of 2010, but Mackie admitted that this deadline would not be met.

Kypros Nicholaides, a professor of fetal medicine at King's College London who was responsible for developing the combined test, said in regards to the low usages of the test that it is 'scandalous and disgraceful because so many babies are dying that would not have, had the method been introduced earlier and everywhere, as it should have been'. He added: 'The NHS is failing 70 per cent of women in Britain and causing the death of normal babies'.

Edwina Rawson, a medical negligence lawyer working for Charles Russell articulated the possibility of the NHS facing lawsuits due to flaws in the screening process. 'If a woman could prove that she was mistakenly told that she was at high risk of Down's, and lost a baby through miscarriage as a result of amniocentesis, then she might be able to sue the hospital for compensation for the loss of the baby', she explained.