Women in UK Faced With Serious Maternity Ward Problems

August 27, 2009 by tiffanyb
Filed under: News

Last year over 3,500 women in the UJ were forced to give birth outside of maternity wards.

According to new figures that came out, almost 4,000 women in the UK gave birth in other places than maternity wards such as the toilet, other hospital departments, corridors, ambulances, and even midwives’ offices. This is a serious problem that women are facing the UK as improper care of a baby and mother during a delivery can have fatal consequences.

While some of these births were deemed actual emergencies and they could not be prevented from happening outside a maternity ward, most of them were completely preventable. According to the The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) 5,000 additional midwives would need to be employed to properly cover all the births in the UK.

Here is what the figures showed:

117 babies were born in Accident and Emergency departments
115 babies were born in other hospital wards besides the maternity one
399 births took place in the maternity ward but not in the correct delivery rooms such as the postnatal rooms
63 babies were born in ambulances
608 babies were born on the way to the hospital
10 babies were born in the hospital car parks
2,997 babies were unplanned home deliveries
In total there were 7, 368 births that happened outside maternity wards

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: “New mothers should not be being put through the trauma of having to give birth in such inappropriate places. While some will be unavoidable emergencies, it is extremely distressing for them and their families to be denied a labour bed because their maternity unit is full.”

Jon Skewes, from the RCM, added: “The rise in the number of births in other than a designated labour bed is a concern. We would want to see the detail behind these figures to look at why this is happening. There is no doubt that maternity services are stretched, and that midwives are working harder and harder to provide good quality care. It is always unfortunate when a woman’s hopes for her baby’s birth do not go as planned. However, no matter how well resourced a service is, there will be circumstances when women give birth in places they had not planned to because pregnancy can be unpredictable.”

The figures are results of 80% local health care trusts.