Notes

Data quality statement

National Perinatal Data Collection, 2023: Quality statement

National Maternal Mortality Data Collection, 2023: Quality statement

National Perinatal Mortality Data Collection, 2023: Quality statement

Acknowledgements

This Australia’s mothers and babies web report was prepared by Denae Cotter, Kyle Miller, Van Nguyen, Natalie Sandlant and Kathryn Sedgwick of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), with valuable input from Louise Catanzariti, Adrian Webster and members of the Perinatal Data Unit (PDU) and the Maternal and Perinatal Health Unit (MPHU).

The Stillbirths and neonatal deaths and Maternal deaths content were prepared by Lauren McFarlane, Megan Fraser, Patrick Goodarzi, Rachel Cordeiro and Michelle Devlin of the AIHW, with valuable input from Louise Catanzariti and Michael Frost.

The maternity models of care content was prepared by Alana Cameron, Polly Evans and Aaron Perrett of the AIHW, with valuable input from Rebecca Rodgers, Adrian Webster, Hannah Cass and Luke Shilson-Hughes. 

Previous members of PDU and MPHU making significant contributions to Australia’s mothers and babies include Madeline Elkington, Deanna Eldridge and Jacqueline Rek. 

A large number of stakeholders provided valuable advice and input to the National Perinatal Data Collection, the National Perinatal Mortality Data Collection, the National Maternal Mortality Data Collection and to this report, including the National Perinatal Data Development Committee, and the National Maternal and Perinatal Mortality Clinical Expert Group, and the National Maternity Data Development Project Advisory Group. In particular, the following staff from the state and territory health departments who provided data and reviewed this report:

  • Gail Ashworth, Martin Drummond and Hafiz Khusyairi, Centre for Epidemiology and Evidence, New South Wales Ministry of Health and Patricia Bradd and Alison Goodfellow, Clinical Excellence Commission, NSW Government
  • Staff in the Consultative Councils Unit, Quality and Safety Analytics, Data Collections Unit, Safer Care Victoria and Victorian Agency for Health Information.
  • Trisha Johnston, Joanne Ellerington, Vesna Dunne, Ben Wilkinson and Megan Kronk, Statistical Services Branch, Department of Health, Queensland
  • Maureen Hutchinson, Jehan Sharma, Alan Joyce and Sheila Klimczyk, Maternal and Child Health, Information and Performance Governance Unit, Department of Health, Western Australia
  • Helen Thomas, Rebecca Nolan, Jason Bennie, Kylie Bryant, Stephanie Flak, Stephanie Minhoto , Britt Catcheside, Stephen Corns, Rosie Meng and Benjamin Krumeich, Epidemiology and Research, Preventive Health SA
  • Jeramie Spong, Peggy Tsang and Cynthia Rogers, Health Information Unit, Department of Health, Tasmania
  • Elizabeth Chalker, Rosalind Sexton, Louise Freebairn, Warren Holroyd, Marcus Nicols and Wayne Anderson, Epidemiology Section, ACT Health
  • Leanne O’Neil and Lin Li, Population and Digital Health, NT Health, Northern Territory.

The AIHW also acknowledges the time, effort and expertise of all clinical staff in collecting and providing the data for the National Perinatal Data Collection (NPDC), the National Perinatal Mortality Data Collection (NPMDC), the National Maternal Mortality Data Collection (NMMDC) and the Maternity Models of Care Data Set (MoC DS).

Parts of this report were funded by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing as a component of the National Maternity Data Development Project.

Amendments

31 October 2025 – The following changes have been made post release:

  • For the National Perinatal Data Collection annual update 2023 tables, an error in the footnotes for Table 3.21 has been corrected and formatting of Table 2.30 has been updated to fix a rounding issue.
  • For the National Perinatal Data Collection annual update 2021 and 2022 tables, an error in the footnotes for Table 3.20 has been corrected.

22 April 2025 – Text changes are as follows (indicated in bold text).

  • On the Summary page:
    • 6.5% (19,458) of babies were First Nations
  • On the Antenatal care page:
    • In 2022, 59% of women attended antenatal care within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
    • In 2022, most women attended antenatal care in the first trimester (nationally 78%).
    • In 2022, the proportion of mothers who attended an antenatal care visit in the first trimester ranged from 45% (in the Australian Capital Territory) to 92% (in Western Victoria) across PHN, and from 35% (in Wanneroo) to 97% (in Centenary) across SA3.
    • In 2022, a high proportion of mothers attended 5 or more antenatal visits – ranging from 86% (in Murrumbidgee) to 98% (in Brisbane North) across PHNs, and from 69% (in Joondalup) to 100% (in Kenmore – Brookfield - Moggill) across SA3s.
  • On the Perineal status page:
    • Nearly 1 in 5 (19 per 100) mothers had an intact perineum. Where the perineum was not intact, second degree lacerations were most common (31 per 100), followed by first degree lacerations (23 per 100). Only a small proportion of women had a third or fourth degree laceration (less than 3 per 100).
    • Nearly 1 in 4 (24 per 100) mothers had an episiotomy, noting that women could be recorded as having both an episiotomy and some degree of laceration.
  • On the Gestational age page:
    • The proportion of babies born between 20 and 36 weeks remained steady between 2010 (8.3%) and 2022 (8.3%) with a peak of 8.7% reached most recently in 2018, while the proportion born between 37 and 39 weeks increased (for example, babies born at 38 weeks increased from 19% in 2010 to 23% in 2022) and the proportion born from 40 weeks onwards decreased (for example, babies born at 40 weeks decreased from 26% in 2010 to 19% in 2022).
  • On the Birthweight page:
    • In 2022, 6.5% of all babies were low birthweight – 6.5% of liveborn babies and 83% of stillborn babies.
    • In 2022, the proportion of liveborn babies who had a low birthweight ranged from 4.9% (in Northern Sydney) to 9.7% (in Northern Territory) across PHNs, and from 2.7% (in Manly) to 18% (in Barkly) across SA3s.
  • On the Mothers aged under 20 and their babies page:
    • Almost 1 in 4 babies born to mothers aged under 20 required active resuscitation and more than 1 in 5 babies needed admission to SCN/NICU (24% and 23%, respectively).
  • On the Mothers aged 35 and over and their babies page:
    • One in 5 babies born to mothers aged 35 and over required active resuscitation (22%), 17% required admission to SCN/NICU and 37% had a hospital stay of 4 days or more.

23 October 2024:

The following footnote has been added to Table 2.5 in the 'Data tables: National Perinatal Data Collection annual update data visualisations 2022' and the corresponding Figure 1 on Maternal medical conditions:

  • For Tas, data for diabetes during pregnancy from 2021 onwards are not comparable with earlier years due to a different reporting methodology in their electronic system.

Text changes are as follows (indicated in bold text):

  • On Method of birth:
    • In 2022, almost 2 in 5 mothers (39%) had a caesarean section birth. This is an increase from 32% in 2010. Mothers who had caesarean sections include all those who had no labour onset (65%) as well as those who required a caesarean section after labour started (35%).
  • On First Nations mothers and their babies:
    • In 2022, 88% of First Nations babies had a normal, or healthy, birthweight. Increasing the proportion of First Nations babies with a healthy birthweight is one of the targets in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (CtG). Note that data reported here include all liveborn babies and are therefore not comparable to data reported for the CtG target which are limited to liveborn singleton babies only.

24 July 2023:

  • Footnote (a) has been revised in:
    • Table 3.20 in the ‘Data tables: National Perinatal Data Collection annual update 2021’
    • Table 5.1 in the ‘Data tables: National Perinatal Data Collection annual update data visualisations 2021’ now consistently has 'First Nations' within the Sub-group disaggregation column.

  • Summary:

    • There has been little change in the proportion of pre-term births ranging between 8.3% in 2011 and 8.2% in 2021 with a peak of 8.7% reached most recently in 2018, and low birthweight babies remained steady at 6.3% between 2011 and 2021.

  • Gestational age:

    • The proportion of babies born between 20 and 36 weeks remained steady between 2011 (8.3%) and 2021 (8.2%) with a peak of 8.7% reached most recently in 2018, while the proportion born between 37 and 39 weeks increased (for example, babies born at 38 weeks increased from 19% in 2011 to 23% in 2021) and the proportion born from 40 weeks onwards decreased (for example, babies born at 40 weeks decreased from 25% in 2011 to 20% in 2021).

16 August 2022 – About and Summary text: the number of babies was reported incorrectly as 295,796. The text has been updated to: 'In 2020, there were 295,976 babies born to 291,712 mothers in Australia'.

22 July 2022 – Data tables containing preliminary data 2020 for Victoria (released 21 June 2022) & were superseded.

9 Nov 2021 – An update was performed to replace data for smoking status in the ‘Smoking during pregnancy’ chapter and in other chapters where smoking status is a disaggregation.

2 June 2020 – A number of formatting issues in the data visualisations have been updated.

5 August 2019 – The key fact box within the data visualisation has been updated to show the latest data (2017) for the following pages:

  • Smoking
  • Place of birth
  • Gestational age
  • Birthweight
  • Stillbirths and neonatal deaths.

27 November 2019 – The Admission to a special care nursery or neonatal intensive care unit key fact in the data visualisation has been updated to read '1 in 5 babies' rather than '1 in 6 babies'.