Coronation Street star Channique Sterling-Brown has highlighted a “systemic issue” in the UK’s maternity care as her character undergoes a harrowing childbirth experience.
In nail-biting scenes set to be broadcast on March 31, her character, the spirited young solicitor Diana “Dee-Dee” Bailey, finds herself in jeopardy when she goes into labour, leading to emergency intervention.
Complications climax when Dee-Dee suffers a haemorrhage following a succession of preventable errors by the hospital staff. Amidst this turmoil, Dee-Dee contemplates lodging a formal grievance against the hospital for gross negligence, alleging racial bias contributed to her pain being overlooked.
Current research underlines a stark disparity, revealing that black women are alarmingly 3.7 times more prone to die related to pregnancy than their white counterparts, as reported by MBRRACE-UK, which scrutinises maternal and infant mortality.
Brown commented: “The story we’re trying to tell is one of truth. I don’t think there is any malice in any of Dee-Dee’s treatment. But it is a case of her being on an overstretched and understaffed ward. She’s not being fully heard because of assumptions that are potentially being made.
“I think it’s just really important to spark conversations.”
She warned: “Beyonce and Serena Williams are two of probably the richest, most famous black women in the world, and they had terrible birthing experiences. That’s such a bigger problem. That’s not just some kind of like malicious person who is just inherently racist.
“It’s a huge systemic issue, unless we’re talking about it there’s no way to fix it.
“The gap is closing between Black women’s mortality rates and White women’s mortality rates but it’s not because black women are being treated better. It’s because white women are dying at higher rates too. So it’s like, what is it about maternity care in the UK at the minute that is costing mothers their lives? It’s a huge issue.”
Discussing the episode’s birth scene, in which character Dee-Dee develops pre-eclampsia, a dangerous condition causing high blood pressure, she added: “Everything is all systems go in terms of getting the baby out as quickly and safely as possible.
“It’s really frightening how quickly that develops and how if someone had intervened a bit sooner and picked up on those symptoms a bit sooner it might have meant that such drastic measures wouldn’t have needed to be taken.
“It just ends up in a bit of an amalgamation of her pain being dismissed, and suddenly finding herself in a severe situation and she is really scared.”
In preparation for her upcoming storylines, Coronation Street’s Brown has collaborated with various organisations and charities, drawing on the real-life experiences of women to inform her performance.
Brown commented: “It’s felt like a huge responsibility to honour women who are affected by this and also honour our healthcare workers who are extremely overstretched and stuff, because there is elements of that at play that we hopefully sensitively address.”
Among the groups she worked with is Birthrights, an organisation dedicated to improving maternity care policies and providing legal advice to uphold high medical and midwifery standards.
Birthrights co-CEOs Janaki Mahadevan and Shanthi Gunesekera remarked: “It’s extremely important that a show like Coronation Street is highlighting the experiences of black women in maternity care. The data has long shown how black women are more likely to suffer physical and psychological harm through pregnancy and birth.
“Our Race Inquiry documented some of the experiences behind these statistics including consistent failure to identify medical conditions due to skin colour, racial stereotyping and breaches of consent.
“This is a crisis that has gone on far too long and we hope that by bringing this to the wider public attention we can increase the movement for change.”
Having joined the cast of the iconic soap in 2022, Brown quickly made her mark, securing the title of best newcomer at the British Soap Awards in 2023.
Catch Coronation Street on weekdays on ITV1.