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MLA Justin McNulty has voiced serious concerns after Southern Trust management called an emergency meeting earlier today raising the possibility of what they say wold be a temporary closure of maternity services at Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, with services consolidated at Craigavon Area Hospital. Justin McNulty MLA said senior midwives at Daisy Hill had contacted him directly to raise their concerns following the meeting.
McNulty said he was "very disturbed by the rumours and speculation today," adding that his immediate concern was for expectant mothers, their families and maternity staff at both hospitals, who he said would face anxiety and uncertainty as a result of the news.
The MLA was strongly critical of the Trust's approach, describing it as a recurring pattern. "This is the Trust's classic playbook tactic," he said, citing previous changes to stroke services, emergency general surgery and the type 1 acute emergency department as examples of what he characterised as a process beginning with claims of necessary temporary closure, followed by an emphasis on patient safety, and ending in the removal of a service. He said Daisy Hill and patients in Newry, South Armagh and South Down were, in his view, consistently the last to gain and first to lose services under this approach.
McNulty referenced figures provided by the Minister of Health through Assembly Questions, showing 4,458 caesarean sections were carried out at Daisy Hill over the last five years, compared with 5,134 at Craigavon. He said more than 800 caesarean sections were performed at Daisy Hill last year alone, underlining what he described as the importance of protecting the service, and questioned whether Craigavon's maternity ward could cope with a potential doubling of numbers arising from any closure.
McNulty thanked midwives and maternity staff at both Daisy Hill and Craigavon for what he described as their "powerfully positive esprit de corps and extraordinary expertise," along with their care and support for expectant mothers and families. He said every family should be able to have their child in the same hospital in which they themselves were born, and reiterated his view that "the patients of Daisy Hill Hospital deserve better."
He repeated his long-standing call for Daisy Hill to be developed as a hub hospital serving its natural hinterland on a cross border basis.
