Eighth baby born in ambulance since maternity unit shut

ANOTHER woman has given birth in an ambulance by the side of the road following the closure of the maternity unit at Monaghan General Hospital.

Happily, the young mother, a non-national, and her baby, are doing fine, but it is the eighth such birth since the tragic death of Bronagh Livingstone after being born prematurely in an ambulance three years ago.

The hospital’s maternity unit closed in 2001, and a year later 32-year-old Denise Livingstone was refused admission when she arrived at the hospital in the middle of the night in an advanced state of labour.

She gave birth while being taken by ambulance to Cavan General Hospital, a journey of more than 30 miles, without a doctor or nurse.

Referring to the latest roadside birth, a spokesperson for the Health Service Executive (HSE) said an ambulance was mobilised from Monaghan after receiving a call that a woman was in labour at 4.03am yesterday morning.

An ambulance arrived at St Patrick’s College in Monaghan, a refugee centre for asylum seekers, at 4.13am and the woman gave birth at 4.45am.

The HSE spokesperson said there was no nurse or doctor on board the ambulance and no request had been made by the crew for a midwife.

She stressed, however, that the ambulance crew were fully trained to deal with women in an advanced stage of labour. While there were protocols in place where a woman presented at a non-obstetrics hospital, this was not the case in this incident.

Monaghan Community Alliance chair, Peadar McMahon, said the HSE have been stressing that the ambulance technicians have all been trained but they could not have the expertise or equipment to deal with every circumstances that might arise.

“We are not campaigning for the return of the maternity unit to Monaghan Hospital, we are campaigning for proper systems in place where at least there would be a midwife available in the hospital if a woman was at an advanced stage of labour. That was definitely not the case this morning,” he said.

Mr McMahon warned that sooner or later there would be another tragedy. “About 90% of births are trouble-free but we must be prepared for the others where complications do arise. We don’t accept that there has to be an acceptable level of mortality. If a service is deemed non-viable from an economic point of view then you are putting a price on a life and we can never accept that.”