Scores of women have suffered severe complications — including major emergency surgery, life-threatening haemorrhage, permanent organ damage and profound psychological trauma — because medical teams failed to detect they had placenta accreta spectrum (PAS), a rare but potentially fatal pregnancy complication.
The scale of the problem has been laid bare by the Action for Accreta campaign, co-founded by Amisha and Nik Adhia, which was launched in February after five hospitals missed the condition in Amisha’s own pregnancy. Since then, 100 women have come forward to share their stories, 75 of them from across the UK. Their accounts, now compiled into a dossier, paint a stark picture of how often the condition goes undiagnosed and the appalling physical and emotional consequences that can follow.
According to the campaigners, six out of ten of the women who contacted them say their PAS was not identified before birth — a failure that dramatically increases the risk of catastrophic bleeding. The 100 cases reveal what campaigners describe as “a dangerous gap in maternity care” and “systemic failures” that, they argue, should compel hospitals to overhaul how staff are trained to spot and manage the condition. Politicians from all main parties at Westminster have backed their call for major reform.
What is placenta accreta spectrum and why is it so dangerous?
PAS occurs when the placenta — the organ that supplies the foetus with nutrients and oxygen — grows too deeply into the wall of the woman’s uterus and blocks part or all of the cervix. This abnormal attachment means that during birth the placenta cannot separate from the uterus in the usual way. The result can be a devastating haemorrhage, often requiring an emergency hysterectomy to save the woman’s life.
Women with a history of caesarean section are at higher risk because the placenta of a subsequent pregnancy can attach to the scar tissue from the previous C-section. Indeed, multiple caesarean sections are present in more than 60% of PAS cases. Assisted fertility treatment using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) also increases the risk, although doctors believe the extra risk posed by IVF is “small” and may relate to the process of transferring and implanting the embryo. Other recognised risk factors include placenta previa (where the placenta covers the cervix), previous uterine surgery such as myomectomy or endometrial ablation, advanced maternal age, and a higher number of gestations.
Yet despite these known risks, the dossier compiled by Action for Accreta shows that many women with clear warning signs were not assessed. Erin Cooper, from Bedfordshire, experienced heavy bleeding from 26 weeks into her pregnancy but was never evaluated for PAS. “What I didn’t know, what no one had diagnosed, was that my placenta was abnormally and dangerously attached,” she said.
When her baby was delivered by emergency caesarean section at 33 weeks in 2024, the haemorrhage was catastrophic. Cooper lost 4.5 litres of blood and needed a massive transfusion of 13 units. To save her life surgeons performed an emergency hysterectomy. “It was like a murder scene,” she recalled. A former NHS operating theatre nurse, she now has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) around blood, has had to leave patient-facing work, and struggles with panic attacks triggered by sirens or driving past a hospital. “I feel a deep loss of my womanhood. I’m now going into early menopause. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about being infertile at 33,” she said.
Chloe Robinson, from Burnley, was taken to hospital in the middle of the night when she began bleeding heavily at home at 34 weeks pregnant in July 2024. In theatre, surgeons discovered she had placenta accreta — something no one had suspected. Because the hospital was unprepared, several on-call staff had to be urgently brought in. Robinson lost six litres of blood and had a hysterectomy. Her daughter suffered a stroke during the traumatic birth, which Robinson believes was a direct consequence of the delayed diagnosis. The child now has cerebral palsy. “If they had found the condition before, none of this may have happened,” she said.
Other women have suffered permanent damage to their bladder or bowels. Cerri-Anne Almond’s PAS was only discovered during her caesarean section in 2021. “As soon as the surgeons opened my abdomen it became clear something was wrong. The placenta was abnormally attached to my uterus. A more specialised surgical team was urgently called in. I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said.
The physical consequences are matched by severe psychological impacts. Women with PAS are at increased risk of PTSD, anxiety, depression and postpartum grief — compounded by the loss of fertility following hysterectomy and the trauma of a near-death experience. The Birth Trauma Association said it has seen too many women experience deep psychological trauma as a result of the condition, particularly when diagnosis has come late.
Campaigners and politicians demand urgent action
Amisha Adhia, who launched the campaign after her own experience, said the stories in the dossier “are a devastating read” and expose dangerous gaps in maternity care. “The fact that 61% of women in this report went undiagnosed proves that the essential infrastructure simply does not exist,” she said. “There is no central data, no mandatory reporting and no national body responsible for PAS, meaning best practice stays locked away in a handful of specialist centres while women elsewhere are left unprotected.”
Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety, said Nik and Amisha Adhia had highlighted an important and under-recognised issue. “These stories and the Action for Accreta campaign highlight worrying gaps in how PAS is identified, recorded and managed across the NHS. Addressing these will require a more consistent, system-wide approach, including improved data, training and clinical preparedness,” he said.
Kim Thomas, chief executive of the Birth Trauma Association, backed the campaign’s demands for updated guidelines to help doctors manage PAS better, for mandatory reporting of cases, and for the condition to be included on maternity dashboards. Amisha Adhia met the minister for maternity care, Gillian Merron, last week and pressed her to push the NHS to do more.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care thanked the women for sharing their experiences and said: “Every mother deserves to be heard and Baroness Amos’ independent investigation [into maternity care in England, due next month] will help us understand the systemic issues behind the unacceptable care many families have faced.” The government has allocated an extra £149 million to improve maternity safety, the NHS has recruited more than 2,000 additional midwives, and Martha’s Rule — which gives patients and their families the right to a second opinion — has been rolled out across all acute hospitals in England. In March 2024, £35 million was announced over three years for specialist training, additional midwives, and programmes to prevent birth-related brain injuries. A list of NHS specialist centres for PAS care was published on March 10, 2026, following a parliamentary question, in an effort to improve transparency and ensure women are referred to expert teams.
However, campaigners warn that progress remains fragile. Concerns have been raised about the withdrawal of ringfenced central funding for England’s maternity services, which could undermine efforts to improve safety and workforce expansion. There is also a recognised need for greater investment in pregnancy research, with only a small fraction of research funding currently directed toward maternity care compared with other conditions.
For the women whose lives have been upended — like Erin Cooper, who can no longer work in the job she loved, and Chloe Robinson, who believes her daughter’s cerebral palsy could have been prevented — the dossier is not just a record of what went wrong. It is a call for a system that, they say, repeatedly failed to listen. The question now is whether the political will to act will match the scale of the harm.
