FOI 26-259 Deaths/Life Threatening Emergencies for <1yr olds
Freedom of Information Request
- Reference
- FOI 26-259 Deaths/Life Threatening Emergencies for <1yr olds
- Request Date
- 09 Jun 2026
- Response Date
- 26 Jun 2026
- Information Requested
Please could you send me details of the amount of calls per year since 2019 for deaths/life threatening emergencies for children below 1 year old and miscarriages and still births/neonatal cardiac arrests.
- Response
For the purposes of this request we have interpreted death/life threatening emergencies as attended Purple category incidents involving patients aged under 1 year old.
Please see the information held below for the period 1 January 2019 to 31 May 2026:
Calendar Year
Emergency (Purple) attended incidents – under 1
2019
239
2020
280
2021
501
2022
636
2023
738
2024
779
2025
774
2026 (to 31 May)
264
Please note that “Purple” calls relate to immediately life-threatening conditions, although not all incidents will result in death.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a dataset that categorises incidents relating to miscarriages or stillbirths. Although we may attend incidents of this nature and it may be captured in freetext, this would require complex skill and judgement to determine these incidents and require the creation of new information. It is for this reason we have applied section 17 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002 as information not held.
The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold a definitive flag for “neonatal cardiac arrest”. However, we are able to provide information using a proxy definition which is considered to most closely reflect newborn resuscitation activity.
This definition includes:
- incidents with a closure code of cardiac arrest or pregnancy;
- patients aged under 28 days; and
- where manual CPR was recorded.
Please note that this methodology may not capture all neonatal cardiac arrests, and may include some cases that do not meet a strict clinical definition.
Important information to consider when interpreting this data
This report has been produced in two parts, this is due to the ongoing integration of a new system. This data cannot be merged into one table due to an overlap in a phased introduction of each system and the methodology for the data time frames is different.
The first table below takes data collected from our legacy system (T2) and the second table below details data collected from (T3); these figures should not be added together.
Calendar Year
T2 Incidents
2021
11
2022
15
2023
<5
2024
9
2025
<5
Calendar Year
T3 Incidents
2025
<5
2026 (to 31 May)
<5
Where figures are fewer than five, these have been suppressed and shown as “<5”. This is because disclosure of low numbers, particularly when combined with the nature of the incident and patient age, could increase the risk of identifying individuals. This information is therefore exempt under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA, as it is personal data and disclosure would contravene the data protection principles.
