One in 14 new mothers are maternity tourists: £182m bill for births to short term migrants and visitors

One in 14 mothers giving birth in the UK are temporary migrants or visitors

Costs £182 million a year and accounts for 7% of NHS maternity spending

Health tourism overall costs the NHS £2billion annually



One in 14 women giving birth in the UK are either temporary migrants or visitors – and cost taxpayers £182million a year.

These new mothers, around 50,000, account for 7 per cent of NHS maternity spending.

The official figures indicate the likely scale of ‘maternity tourism’ whereby women from overseas come to Britain purely to give birth.



It exposes the huge pressure put on already stretched services from those with no right to free NHS care – and comes just a week after it emerged half of NHS trusts had to close their maternity units last year.



Bimbo Ayelabola, who gave birth to quintuplets on the NHS after travelling to the UK, costing taxpayers £200,000

The statistics were revealed as Jeremy Hunt announced a system aiming to recover £500million a year of the estimated £2billion annual cost of health tourism.



Patients from outside the EU are currently charged after receiving NHS care, but only a fraction of these costs are paid.



Under the Health Secretary’s plans, they will be charged one-and-a-half times the cost of the treatment in advance. They will also pay a £200 upfront charge when they obtain a visa.



Health trusts who fail to track down those with no right to free care could face swingeing fines running to millions of pounds.

But the plans show that migrants who refuse to pay in advance will still be entitled to emergency treatment – because of the Human Rights Act. This includes all maternity services.



Treatment regarded as ‘urgent’ because it cannot wait until the overseas visitor returns home will also be provided even if hospital staff cannot secure a deposit.

Professor J Meirion Thomas, of the Royal Marsden Hospita, pictured,l in London, has said that the flow of West African women flying in to give birth for free at Guy¿s and St Thomas¿ NHS Trust, was so common

Details of the cost of maternity care were released in Department of Health documents accompanying the plan. It said research suggests ‘overseas visitors and migrants’ from Europe and beyond account for around 2 per cent of NHS resources but 7 per cent of its maternity spending.



Last year the NHS spent a total of £2.6billion on maternity care, £182million of which funded the treatment of foreign visitors and temporary migrants. MPs called on ministers to stop heavily pregnant women getting on planes to come to the UK to give birth.



Tory MP Andrew Percy, who sits on the Health Select Committee said: ‘People must not be allowed to come to this country to use maternity services that they are not paying for. I am glad the Government is going to start charging these people but the worry is that many of them still will not pay.



‘Perhaps we should be thinking about making sure our border controls are erected to stop women getting on a plane if they are heavily pregnant.’



London doctors have described how foreign nationals deliberately board flights from Africa in the weeks prior to their due date to use the capital’s hospitals.



Professor J Meirion Thomas, of the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, has said that the flow of West African women flying in to give birth for free at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust, was so common it was referred to by staff as the ‘Lagos Shuttle’.



In just two years, border officials at Gatwick Airport stopped more than 300 women from overseas ‘arriving in an advanced stage of pregnancy who evidently intend to access NHS maternity services’.



There remains a maternity crisis in the NHS because of the growing birth rate in the UK. There is already a shortage of around 4,500 midwives in the NHS in England.



Last week figures showed half of health trusts in England had to close their maternity units at least once in the last year because of a lack of midwives or beds, with closures lasting anything from a few hours to several days.



Patients from outside the EU are currently charged after receiving NHS care, but only a fraction of these costs are paid

The Department of Health estimates that just £73million was recovered from overseas visitors and migrants last year. It is not known how much was recovered for maternity care.



Mr Hunt said: ‘We have no problem with international visitors using the NHS as long as they pay for it – just as British families do through their taxes.



‘These plans will help recoup up to £500million a year, making sure the NHS is better resourced and more sustainable at a time when doctors and nurses on the frontline are working very hard.’

But doctors’ groups questioned whether the plans were practical and insisted health staff were required to treat the sick.



Dr Mark Porter, of the British Medical Association, said: ‘Anyone accessing NHS services should be eligible to do so but a doctor’s duty is to treat the patient that’s in front of them, not to act as border guard.

‘There are question marks over whether … the NHS has the infrastructure and resources necessary to administrate a cost-effective charging system.



‘Above all, it’s vitally important these proposals don’t have an impact on the care patients receive and that sick and vulnerable patients aren’t deterred from seeking necessary treatment, which can have a knock on effect on public health.’

Quintuplets on NHS... at a cost of £200,000

Last year the NHS spent a total of £2.6billion on maternity care, £182million of which funded the treatment of foreign visitors and temporary migrants

A Nigerian gave birth to quintuplets on the NHS after travelling to the UK while pregnant in 2011.

Bimbo Ayelabola’s care is estimated to have cost taxpayers around £200,000.



Despite being married to a business tycoon, Ohi Nasir Ilavbare, the 33-year-old applied for a six-month visitor’s visa soon after finding she was pregnant, and came to the UK without her husband to visit her three sisters.



Miss Ayelabola had become pregnant with five babies by taking fertility drug Clomid for eight times longer than recommended. She gave birth to two boys and three girls after a complex caesarean section and stayed in hospital for almost two weeks, paid for by the taxpayer.



She was later found to be illegally working as an Avon lady.

In 2012 another heavily-pregnant woman, whose identity is not known, flew from her home in Nigeria to take advantage of NHS maternity services. She had £10,000 of treatment but is understood to have returned home with her baby without paying a penny.



The Harvard-educated woman travelled 3,200 miles from Lagos to Manchester because she was worried about standards of care in her country and thought she would be in safer hands in the UK.

At Wythenshawe Hospital she told doctors there were complications with her pregnancy.



Two midwives, two urology consultants, a radiology consultant, two obstetric consultants and two anaesthetists attended her in the delivery room before her baby was born by emergency caesarean.

Staff sought billing details and told her the cost was around £10,000. However, she is not thought to have paid anything.

Nigeria offers free maternity care but the quality is very poor and there is a high mortality rate.



