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One in five child deaths in an east London borough is due to the baby's parents being related, a shocking report has found.

Redbridge council found that 19 per cent of baby deaths in the borough over the last 8 years were because of ‘consanguineous relationships’, meaning marriages between couples who are second cousins or closer relatives.

A health and wellbeing board meeting heard that 9 per cent of the children who died were from Pakistani families, where consanguineous marriages are more common.

The practice of marrying a second cousin is not illegal in the UK.

According to the Ilford Recorder, councillor Joyce Ryan told the meeting she was worried that communities in the area were not heeding the warnings about the relationships.

She said: “Although everyone is battling hard at this it is something that some communities struggle to accept and sometimes do not want to accept.”

In total, there were more than 200 child deaths in Redbridge between 2008 and 2016, with the council reviewing 80 per cent of them.

Twenty-nine per cent of those were unexpected.

Half of the child deaths were among children of Asian ethnicities.

In response to the figures, the council has pledged to introduce further education of Asian communities in Redbridge.

Vicky Hobart, Redbridge’s director of public health, accepted consanguinity is an issue in the borough, but called on residents not to “misunderstand” the report.

She told the meeting: “Consanguinity is very common in many cultures and the worry with something like this is that we are dealing with very small numbers.

“It is important to note trends but we should not read too much into it.”

The number of children dying from chromosomal, genetic or congenital anomalies was the second highest cause of death in 2009, with the number of consanguineous parents in the borough at their highest.

Consanguineous couples in Redbridge have declined since, with a similar fall in the number of child deaths from genetic anomalies.

The report examined all deaths in the borough of children up to the age of 18 since April 1st 2008, with the exception of stillborn babies and terminated pregnancies.

Details on deaths were supplied by the coroner to the Redbridge Child Death Overview Panel, which compiled the report.