More on Maternity
A maternity themed set of articles today but first some shocking news:
Patricia Hewitt has resigned!
Ok, today is the first of April & Dr Crippen was having some fun with his readers but it was a pleasant thought while it lasted. Of course we would then have to suffer again as the new incumbent learnt on the job.
A government sticking to its promises; wonders will never cease!
All women will be guaranteed the chance to give birth at home with a National Health Service midwife within the next three years, Ivan Lewis, the health minister, will announce this week.
The promise to offer every woman the choice of giving birth at home, at a midwife-led birth centre or in hospital under a consultant will be included in the government’s maternity plan to be launched on Tuesday.
But what is this? This statement is beginning to take some of the shine off it already.
Lewis disputed the claim by the Royal College of Midwives that an extra 10,000 midwives were needed.
Or maybe not keeping to promises after all. It all becomes clearer when you read the details as the Guardian clearly has. I’m glad to see at-least some sections of the media beginning to be a bit more sceptical.
A government pledge to give every mother the right of one-to-one care from a midwife during labour has been watered down to allow hospitals to use lower-paid attendants with fewer skills.
The policy shift will be in the government’s maternity strategy, due to be announced by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt this week. The government has come under increasing pressure over the state of maternity wards due to a recent spate of reports showing that standards in Britain are falling, with thousands of women not receiving good ante-natal care or enough support during the birth. In its election manifesto in May 2005, Labour promised that by 2009 women would be cared for by a named midwife throughout pregnancy and would receive continuous care throughout the delivery. Instead they could now find themselves in the care of a maternity support worker, a new category of staff without a nursing or midwifery degree who may not be able to deliver a baby safely.
Just like the myriad of other support workers introduced by other parts of the NHS & the public services with little or no evidence behind them.
RCM adviser Sue Jacob said: ‘This change has been quietly slipped in and is nothing short of scandalous. Do we really see childbirth as so unimportant that you de-skill the very people who will be delivering children? Women want nothing less than a midwife by their side when they are in labour. We know from all the research that’s been done that continuous care from an experienced professional makes a huge difference to the safety of both the mother and the child.’
The HFEA might or might not be about to limit IVF with multiple embryo implantation to be curbed according to the Guardian & the Independent claiming that donor eggs are to be rationed but there have already been denials. Waiting to see what comes out but those who want to can simply go to the large number of centres in other countries that offer more choices.
And Bel Mooney asks a very (im)pertinent question:
….. let’s face it if a new NICU is really so badly needed, shouldn’t the NHS fund it? YES! I want to shout, but it ain’t going to. We have to get real. In 1979, then a columnist on the Daily Mirror, I excoriated this country’s Third World standards of maternity care, writing, “Why do we accept this situation? In 1976 a government report criticised the care of mothers and infants and called the tragic situation ‘a holocaust’. Worse still… since 1945, 30 documents have been produced in Britain saying that good care can prevent handicap and nothing has been done.” Today at least 43 maternity units face cutbacks and closures, yet the babies keep coming. Work it out.