Concerns Over the Future of Hospital Maternity Units
By Ian Noble
A TORY MP has voiced concerns over the long-term future of a maternity service.
Under new proposals, babies born at Malton and Whitby community hospitals will instead be delivered at Scarborough Hospital.
The Scarborough and NorthEast Yorkshire NHS Trust runs the hospitals involved in the proposal.
The trust feels that having all the births in Scarborough will give mothers easier access to greater medical aid if problems occur.
But Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh has this week voiced her disappointment at the proposals.
She said: “I know this will be a bitter blow to all the local mothers living in the Malton catchment area.
“I have written to Scarborough Hospital to find out the number of babies delivered in the Malton hospital maternity unit in each of the last eight years.
“The figures clearly show a huge drop in the number of deliveries there from a high of 124 in 2004 to a low of 25 in 2007.
“That would seem to indicate a deliberate policy on behalf of the trust to run down the unit with a view to its proposed closure.”
She added: “I shall work very closely with the trust to ensure the best possible provision of maternity services locally, should the proposed closure proceed.”
The plans to move the units have been sent by the trust to the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, for a final decision.
He is being aided by Government inspectors and is expected to make a final decision on the scheme within a month.
A spokesman for the trust said:
“There’s an increasing need for care to be developed at maternity units.
“These plans are to make sure we provide the safest service that we can. Child birth has never been safer, but things can go wrong and when they do they are usually tragic.
“At the minute, mothers in Malton and Whitby are 20 miles away from Scarborough hospital if something goes wrong.”
Under the plans, both Whitby and Malton hospitals’ home birth, post-natal and ante-natal services would continue to run as before.
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