3 December 2025
Lack of interpreters contributed to deaths of 16 children last year
A lack of interpreters was identified as contributing to 16 children’s deaths that were reviewed in England in 2024-25, including 11 babies under a year old — a small increase from the previous year’s figures.
The data was collated and released by the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) from reports by the Child Death Review — a multi-agency panel that investigates the death of every child in England, looking beyond the medical causes of death to consider wider factors.
In 2023-24, a lack of translators contributed to the deaths of 14 children, including 10 under a year old, the NCMD found.
Due to the length of the death review process, the data might not include all child deaths that occurred in the last year.
While the NCMD does not disclose the settings in which the deaths occurred, language barriers in healthcare have previously been identified as a particular issue in maternity services. They can also hinder patients’ understanding of their conditions and ability to consent to treatment — issues that were illuminated by the 2021 death of Rana Abdelkarim following a catastrophic bleed after giving birth. [...]
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