New mothers are being exploited by commercial organisations that are allowed to offer packs and literature in hospital wards, it was alleged today.
The NHS and some UK royal colleges profit by selling commercial advertisers access to pregnant women through promotions such as Bounty bags, says Dr Margaret McCartney, a GP from Glasgow, UK, in today’s British Medical Journal.
Bounty – a large promotions company – distributes 2.6 million "baby bags" a year, often on postnatal hospital wards. For this access they pay the NHS 2.3m UK pounds annually.
Frequently Bounty representatives tell new mothers that the only way to obtain a Child Benefit claim form is to accept the bag and provide their contact details, later used for marketing. Mothers also report being pressured into paying for unwanted photographs of their baby.
New mothers are also targeted via adverts and editorials in an "ethically questionable" magazine from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Dr McCartney claimed. She also criticises Emma’s Diary, a book comprising 25 pages of medical information and 119 pages of adverts and offers, again requiring contact details.
A 2010 survey of over 1,000 parents by the National Childbirth Trust found that half did not know, and were unhappy, that their details would be used to target advertising to them. A further 37% knew that their details would be sold on and were unhappy with it.
Dr McCartney writes: "The lack of knowledge about what signing over your details means is troubling in a hospital environment, which should take consent and confidentiality seriously. The hours after birth are hardly an optimal time to obtain formal consent.
"Some conflicts of interest in medicine are hard to avoid. Others are not. These should be easy."
McCartney, M. Profits from pregnancy: how trusted organisations sell out women to commercial interests. BMJ 29 May 2013 doi: 10.1136/bmj.f3448 [abstract]
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