Women still in great distress at prospect of labouring alone

Krysia Lynch, chairperson of AIMS Ireland, the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services in Ireland.

A campaign group for better maternity services has called on the health minister and HSE to support easing restrictions for pregnant women and their partners.

The health service has come under pressure from the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services in Ireland (AIMS Ireland), for treating the partners of pregnant women as “visitors”.

While all hospitals now allow partners in for planned active births — and most for the 20-week scan and to visit an infant in the neonatal intensive care unit — other areas remain closed.

The confusion was highlighted this week when Micheál Martin twice said a new plan would include partners attending births even though this is happening already under certain circumstances.

HSE says uniformity is not possible

Yesterday, the Taoiseach said, “we need uniformity now", but the HSE and the National Women and Infants Health Programme (NWIHP) have said uniformity is not possible across the maternity hospitals.

In response, AIMS Ireland is calling for a more structured approach. 

Chairwoman  Krysia Lynch said: “Our national maternity strategy was supposed to ensure equity of access and a unified maternity care service. Covid-19 restrictions were one of the first tests as to how well maternity units were able to respond.” 

Women 'distressed' to be labouring alone

She said women still contact the organisation in great distress at the prospect of labouring alone while their partner is outside.

“We are seeking an assurance from the Minister of Health, Stephen Donnelly, that there will be a clear roadmap for the easing of maternity restrictions in Ireland,” she said.

The plan includes changing partners’ status so they are not "visitors" to be excluded, and a commitment from hospital groups to remove restrictions on a phased basis over four weeks.

Any hospital which cannot comply should publish their risk assessment and be supported with "timely capital and infrastructural investment".

'Some restrictions make no sense'

Ms Lynch said transparency is key, saying: “Some of these restrictions appear to make no sense at all. For example, enabling pregnant people to have a partner on one side of a corridor in the postnatal ward, but not on the other side of the corridor on the early labour ward."

HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry said Covid-19 had a particular impact on maternity units co-located in acute hospitals.

He said: “In some hospitals, we had outbreaks that brought the hospital to the brink of closure. We know that in at least three or four hospitals in January: 

We had to introduce as many measures as we could to extinguish the outbreaks and to reduce the chances of introducing further infection. 

This echoes comments by Dr Peter McKenna, obstetrician, who said maternity hospitals could ease restrictions due to the decreasing cases but it has to be done on a hospital by hospital basis. 

Professor Mary Horgan, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said rapid antigen tests could be one solution if hospitals agreed. 

In the Seanad yesterday, Senator Pauline O'Reilly said: “Maternal healthcare is a postcode lottery, which is not the fault of the hospitals.

“Midwives have been heroes throughout the pandemic and it is now time for the whole of society to address the issue post-pandemic.”