LONG DISTANCES from centralised maternity centres was leading to an increase in the number of “babies born before arrival” in the Cork and Kerry region. These often occurred on the road to the maternity hospital without professional help, according to a spokeswoman for Aims Ireland, the association for improvements in maternity services here.
The two and three hour journeys were over poor roads, adding to the discomfort of expectant mothers , Aims said.
A spokesman for HSE South said a variety of factors including individual case history was responsible for the phenomenon known as born before arrival, which still represented only a tiny number of the total number of births in the region’s hospitals. Aims, a long established support group is calling for the restoration of community based maternity services in the west and south west. Its spokeswoman, Krysia Lynch yesterday said a whole lot of issues surrounding how expectant mothers are treated in this country needed to be addressed, and “women deserve more”.
The misdiagnoses of scans was yet another example of the lack of precedence accorded women and was “a clear case of technology being taken more seriously than women”, she added.
Women in labour in Cork and Kerry have to undergo journeys of up to three hours or more simply to reach the maternity hospitals which are centralised in Cork city and in Tralee. If a woman is deemed not to be in active labour she is told to return home. This is leading to cases of women waiting outside maternity units, according to Ms Lynch.
According to the HSE South, five babies were born before arrival (BBA) in 2007 out of a total of 6,396 births. There were nine such births in 2008 out of a total of 8,786. births and in 2009 there were a total of 11 babies BBA out of a total of 8,978 births.
“Babies are born before arrival due to a number of circumstances. Mothers of these babies come from different areas some live within an hour of the hospital while others live further away,” the HSE South spokesman said.
The amalgamation of services at Cork University Hospital was of existing city hospitals and no rural hospitals were closed as a result, he added.