The increasing risk of roadside births is indicative of a dual crisis threatening the viability of maternity hospitals: midwife and obstetrician shortages hobble public services as private units face collapse over soaring costs and declining birth rates.
Nationally, over half of rural maternity services (more than 140) have closed in the past 20 years, Maternity Consumer Network founder Alecia Staines says.
“Muswellbrook [in the Hunter region] and Milton-Ulladulla [in Shoalhaven] are maternity deserts, and we are hearing constant concerns from staff and women across NSW,” she says.
“Once a maternity service closes, towns lose emergency care and operating theatres and effectively become geriatric units. In rural communities without maternity services, there are higher rates of preterm and stillbirths.”
Before Soli was born, Anja Adams and her husband, Ryan, didn’t reach their closest birthing service, Shoalhaven Hospital at Nowra, one hour’s drive from their Burrill Lake home.
They had to drive right past Milton-Ulladulla Hospital, 15 minutes from their home. That hospital stopped offering birthing services in 2016. The local health district said the hospital delivered just one baby a fortnight.
“I had an overwhelming urge to push and have the baby, and we had to pull over,” Adams recalls. “It was a dangerous location on a busy highway. But we didn’t have a choice.”
The Maternity Consumer Network wants the federal government to deliver reliable access to maternity care, including Medicare-funded midwives for home births, and bundled funding across services and care providers. This was recommended by an independent review in October, which the government is considering.
A spokesman for NSW Health said babies are born before arrival at hospital for various reasons, including rapid labour, and the ministry was working with the federal government to boost the number of regional GPs with training in obstetrics.
Source: 12ft