Public maternity services woeful, warns consultant

IRISH women are being forced to endure a “woeful” public maternity service, which has the lowest level of consultant obstetricians in the developed world, a leading consultant has warned.

Dr Gerry Burke said labour wards and ultra-sound departments are having difficulty coping with capacity and has called on the Government to improve maternity services as the birth rate continues to rise.

More than 64,000 babies were born here last year, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office. But there are just 100 obstetricians, meaning one per 6,400 births in

Ireland — the lowest rate in the developed world.

Switzerland, which has a similar population but lower birth rate, has 10 times more obstetricians employed in their health service.

Dr Burke said access of mothers to senior medical personnel is “dismal”, unless women pay high fees for private care.

“It’s no longer tenable for people not to have good access to senior staff when they are having a baby. I don’t think the quality of access should depend on income,” he said. There is a shortage of ultra-stenographers, when services are becoming more and more dependent on ultra-sounds, he said. Machines used for ultrasounds are old and are not changed every five years as recommended, he added.

The Limerick-based consultant said bed occupancy rates in maternity hospitals are 100%, meaning wards are constantly full and difficult to clean properly.

“The number of births are going to rise over the next few years. There was a big surge of births in the 1970s and all those people are having babies now. They are having babies when they are a little older, so there are more medical problems,” he said.

Dr Burke said capacity at neo-natal units is also full, and one woman who recently got into difficulty in her pregnancy had to be transferred to Drogheda because there were no beds for her in Dublin.

He said: “It is not good enough that women are in six or seven-bedded rooms sharing a bathroom, after going through the best experience of their life. But we can deal with the accommodation issue, by sending women home soon after giving birth. We can skimp by on accommodation and it might cause discomfort. But we can’t do that with ultra-sounds and neo-natal services.”

Dr Burke said: “If a woman is haemorrhaging or has a serious medical condition, we often have to put them in an ambulance and send them across town.”

He said the Health Service Executive is doing all it can. It “falls to senior members of Government” to make the changes that are needed, he said.