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| 20 March 2008 |
No Room At The Ward For Expectant Mums |
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New figures show that more women in labour than ever before have been turned away from maternity wards last year because they were full.
More than 40% of the 103 trusts that provided data to a survey said that they had to refuse the women or divert them to other sites.
The figures were obtained by the Conservative Party in a freedom of information request.
The Tories said that of the Trusts that had to turn women away, 74 % had more than 3,000 births last year, suggesting larger maternity units were at higher risk of closing.
One of the biggest maternity providers in England, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust reported 28 closures.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: "The Government's plans to close maternity units when services are already overstretched fly in the face of common sense.
"Labour are fixated with cutting smaller, local maternity services and concentrating them in big units.
"But women don't want to travel miles to give birth."
A Department of Health spokesman said directing women to other hospitals should be the exception rather than the rule.
"It is difficult to precisely predict when a mother will go into labour and sometimes, at the times of peak demand maternity units do temporarily divert women to nearby facilities," he said.
A spokesperson for the National Childbirth Trust said: "It is a major cause of anxiety to telephone, or even arrive at a maternity unit, when in labour to find the doors are shut.
"Unscheduled closures should only occur in very exceptional circumstances when to keep a unit open would be unsafe."
(DS)
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