Health New Zealand releases guidelines to help families with perinatal loss

Health NZ releases Tuituia Te Kahu, a new national pathway providing compassionate and culturally safe standards for families experiencing pregnancy or infant loss.

By: AXL Media

Published: Apr 6, 2026, 4:26 AM EDT

Source: RNZ

Establishing a National Standard for Bereavement

The release of the National Bereavement Care Pathway for Perinatal Loss, titled Tuituia Te Kahu, marks a critical shift in how the New Zealand healthcare system addresses infant mortality and miscarriage. Each year, between 700 and 900 families in Aotearoa experience perinatal loss, with an additional 13,000 to 15,000 affected by miscarriage before 20 weeks. This new framework aims to move beyond a "piecemeal" approach, offering a unified set of nine standards to guide primary, community, and specialist hospital services in providing high-quality emotional and medical support.

The Concept of Tuituia Te Kahu

Technical Advisory Group co-chair Kendall Stevenson explained that the pathway is built upon the Māori concept of whāriki (a woven mat). This metaphor represents the interconnectedness and strength of the various care standards. The name Tuituia Te Kahu was inspired by a dream, symbolizing the act of threading or binding (tuitui) and referencing Kahu Taurima, Health New Zealand’s wider maternity and early childhood program. In this context, kahu also serves as a poignant term for a baby who has passed away, emphasizing the need for a system that "sews" support into the existing maternity framework.

Transformative Analysis: Addressing Systemic Gaps

While New Zealand has long been recognized for its world-class maternity services, experts argue that the system has historically lacked a formal, woven-in structure for managing death and family grief. The absence of a standardized pathway created a "postcode lottery," where the quality of bereavement care depended heavily on a family's location. Tuituia Te Kahu represents a transformative effort to bridge this gap, ensuring that clinical excellence in birth is matched by compassionate excellence in loss. By formalizing these standards, the health system is finally acknowledging that bereavement care is not an optional "extra" but a core component of reproductive health.