Doctor critical of hospital conditions

MOTHERS and newborn babies endure unacceptable conditions in Limerick’s Mid-Western Regional Maternity hospital, a leading obstetrician said yesterday.

Dr Gerard Burke called on the HSE to prioritise existing plans for a new maternity hospital in the grounds of the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Dooradoyle.

Dr Burke revealed that on more than 100 nights last year the hospital’s neonatal ward was full.

Dr Burke said that as the hospital has no intensive care unit, mothers who suffer a bad haemorrhage have to be put into an ambulance and rushed to Dooradoyle for care.

He said: “This can be very dangerous. The day of the free-standing maternity hospital is gone because increasing numbers of women are giving birth for the first time at an older age with risk of complications.

“You need to be located alongside the general hospital.”

While the HSE had carried out many improvements at the hospital, Dr Burke said the time had come to build a new maternity hospital.

Despite difficult conditions, he said the regional maternity hospital last year recorded the lowest death rate of babies weighing just over the miscarriage weight of 500 grams.