Coombe’s busiest year in its history

THE country’s biggest maternity hospital, the Coombe in Dublin, has recorded its busiest year in its 181-year history.

A little more than 8,000 babies were born there in 2006 including three sets of triplets and one set of quadruplets.

The hospital’s annual report for 2006, published yesterday, shows a big increase in births, compared with 7,500 births in 2002. The figure is expected to exceed 8,500 this year.

A quarter of all babies born there were to non- Irish parents and one in 20 mothers were African.

The report shows that 1,746, or a fifth, of all births in the hospital last year were by caesarean section. Two in five were elective, while the remainder were emergency cases.

Of mothers who gave birth in the hospital last year:

* Almost a third (32.6%) had not planned their pregnancy.

* Almost a fifth (18.2%) were smokers.

* Almost half (46.6%) did not take folic acid.

n4.2% were under 20 years of age and 4.3% were 40 or older.

Sixty mothers were using methadone or other illicit drugs, while 472 had a history of drug use. Twenty-five mothers were HIV positive. More than 100 were victims of domestic violence.

The report detailed serious staff shortages. The operating theatre, where 5,645 women underwent procedures last year, said in off-peak hours, it only has a team sufficient to deal with one surgical emergency at a time.

“As a result, 68 women had their emergency surgery performed simultaneously with another, resulting in a halving of the resources available to each,” the report said.

The perinatal ultrasound department has 33% fewer staff than it had four years ago. As a result, it cannot routinely offer a second semester anomaly scan to patients.

The anaesthetic department which provides epidurals and anaesthesia for caesarean sections said “staffing levels out of normal working hours are dangerously low”.

The midwifery department at the Coombe said it depends on agency staff for 20% of its cover, which is “unsustainable in the medium to long term”.