Home births with a midwife are as safe as births in a hospital with a doctor, according to a study of nearly 2,200 births in British Columbia.

The study in Tuesday's Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests home births have a lower incidence of infection and use of drugs for pain.

This is the first time the safety of midwifery has been studied since several provinces passed legislation during the 1990s allowing midwives to practice.

The study looked at 862 home births with a midwife, 571 hospital births with a midwife and 743 hospital births with a physician during the years 1998 and 1999.

The researchers found there was no statistically significant difference in the incidence of babies receiving oxygen, being transferred to another hospital, or other complications among the three groups.

Three of the babies in the home-birth group died around the time of their delivery, compared to one in the hospital delivery group.

The authors of the study concluded that the number of deaths was similar to that found in other studies and the difference in death rate between the two groups was too small to be statistically important.