The case for a midwife led maternity unit at King George Hospital

At the last save King George A&E meeting we agreed to campaign for a midwife maternity led unit on the King George site.

I confess as a lay person to not being completely confident of the idea, but was influenced by John Cryer's statement that good public services are local public services.

I attended the monthly meeting of the North London Save our NHS last night and was delighted to get the support of the Doctors in the group for a midwife unit at King George and given evidence as to why it is reasonable to campaign for one.

The Inner North East London Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee met earlier this month and had a detailed presentation on the future of maternity in NE London given to them. The full agenda with maternity at pages 23 to 60 is at the link Agenda

  The following grabbed my attention:

The photo above shows a bid has been made to move births to midwife units with a claim to save money.

The page above makes the claim that low risk women have a  safer birth at a midwife unit. It would be interesting to know why, as the expectation would be that a consultant led unit would be best for all women. The page below shows BHRUT with the most births, this must be expected to rise with all the development in the area.

King George is absent from the paper and an assurance is given that sufficient capacity in the system to cope with extra births. However there must be scope for campaigning for a maternity unit at King George, but it will be difficult as the existing plan for King George is to take units off the site and sell land off for housing.

I was assured last night that the new maternity unit planned for Whipps is not for all Redbridge women.