Childbirth Tragedy
“RIGHT NOW, AS A GP, I HAVE A CASE SIMILAR TO BABY ELLIE.IT IS A TRAGIC OUTCOME, WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IN 2019 AND, DARE I SAY IT, PROBABLY WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IN 1989.”
BALKANISED SYSTEM
Donna Chisholm’s articles are always well researched and valuable (Losing Ellie, January).
The issue with our maternity system is difficult. Labour’s health economist Heather Simpson and the Helen Clark government wanted to abolish the midwifery-plus-medical “team” concept of obstetrics – and that has surely happened.
But healthcare is a moving ballpark, and by and large not just GPs but also specialists have been perhaps content to vacate the politically unpleasant milieu of childbirth.
We are now left with a somewhat Balkanised service supported by perhaps the largest “newly privatised” health sector service in the nation’s history – independent lead maternity carers (LMCs). When “complications occur”, those complications are tidied up by tired and mostly foreign registrars or junior consultants.
Childbirth is now substantially controlled by the unionised College of Midwives, which feels that $5000 per week is what they are entitled to. They have no competition apart from the DHB services, which can offer no DHBassured primary maternity services in most regions due to the shortages.
The other reason the workforce is under-employed [Chisholm’s article showed more than 3300 midwives held practising certificates but about 30% of them chose to work less than 24 hours a week] is that the College of Midwives requires regular attendances at sanguineous delivery units in order to maintain registration – even for
