Sarah Brown praises B!RTH plays about women’s healthcare choices and inequality

Theirworld President Sarah Brown says increased knowledge, awareness and opportunity are helping to significantly reduce the numbers of women dying in pregnancy and during childbirth. 

She was speaking during an Edinburgh Festival panel discussion to launch the B!RTH project – in which science and the arts unite to shine a light on reproductive rights and birth inequalities.

The project includes four plays being performed at the city’s Traverse Theatre. One, Choices by Stacey Gregg, explores the impact of society on the choices women have concerning their fertility. 

There are also plays by women from countries including Syria, India, Kenya and China. 

B!RTH is a global theatrical project designed to provoke debate on a worldwide scale and question one of the key issues of our time, the vast inequality in healthcare across the world.

Sarah, who is also founder of the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory in Edinburgh, said: “B!RTH has stories from India and Syria but it also has stories from the United Kingdom – looking at what those different challenges are. 

“What has emerged from the play about the UK are the choices that people now have and also the knowledge they have access to.

“I don’t think anyone in the UK feels they can’t access our amazing NHS but they will want to know that they have the information and have the opportunity to make choices. 

“More than 300,000 women die every year in pregnancy and childbirth but that was nearly double 10 years ago. 

“A very concerted campaign has helped drive numbers downwards.” 

The project is led through a collaboration between the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health.