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Bed Shortage: 4,000 British Women Give Birth in Hallways, Bathrooms and Elevators
Looks like the Brits have a baby boom on their hands. One they apparently have been ill prepared for. Some may point their fingers at socialized health care but others may just say that people have just been getting busy, really busy.
Over the last year, almost 4,000 women have had to give birth in inappropriate places – not by choice – in the hospital’s bathrooms, hallways and even an elevator due to a severe shortage of hospital beds and midwives. According to the Daily Mail, maternity wards have not given services on 553 occasions to women in labor. But it’s just not the 20% rise in birthrates in some areas that is too blame, since 1997 about 22% of the maternity beds have eliminated. An out of balance equation. And in a midwife shortage and that spells maternity mayhem.
A Tory spokesperson 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.”
But there looks like there may be a solution in sight, the Care Services Minister stated that “We recognise that some parts of the country face particular challenges due to the rising birth rate and that is why last year we pledged to increase funding for maternity by £330million over three years. We now have more maternity staff than ever before and we have already met our target to recruit 1,000 extra midwives by September.”
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0 Comments
Andy commented on Aug 27 09 at 1:24 pmAn obvious solution would be to allow these women to birth at home with midwives. Clearly no medical intervention was required in the first place if they birthed in hallways and elevators, so why not allow them the dignity of having an assisted birth at home?
Laure68 commented on Aug 27 09 at 1:50 pmAndy, actually in the UK they actively promote home birth, and it is fully covered under their health care system.
Rosana commented on Aug 27 09 at 2:56 pmAndy, that was my first thought when I started reading the article. However, is there a way that these women could have know that the bed shortage was going to be a problem and ignored it? or maybe nobody said anything.
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