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Midwife Mary Ingham spoke out against the plans to close maternity services at Hope Hospital at the Hands Off Hope rally in March last year. Now she says Hope staff are confused about the future of the site
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Midwives slam MP’s hospital claims
Emma Gill30/ 8/2007
SALFORD MP Hazel Blears has sparked anger and confusion by suggesting she has helped save Hope Hospital's maternity services.
Following Friday's announcement that Hope's maternity and neonatal intensive care units are to be axed, the MP issued a statement stating that 'high quality maternity services will continue in Salford'.
Her comments were made because the panel that made the decision on Hope made a recommendation that health bosses should look into retaining a midwife-led unit at the site so women can continue to give birth in the city.
But midwives say as far as they are aware health bosses have always been against the idea of a stand alone midwife-led unit for safety reasons and in any case this would not mean that services have been saved.
Midwife Mary Ingham said: "I think there's still confusion really. It was announced at the hospital that we're closing and then a national newspaper reported Hazel Blears had saved her local unit - that's news to us.
"We were always told that the Trust would never pay the insurance for a midwife-led unit because it's not as safe as having a doctor around and you never know until the last minute what might happen.
"In an emergency we would have to get a woman to St Mary's or Bolton and that's a heck of a distance to be going with someone in the middle of labour."
She added: "I just feel the women of Salford are being deprived. We've got such a high level of deprivation in Salford and these women are not going to be able to travel.
"We're going to have more inappropriate women demanding to have babies at home when really it's not the safest option. Some will ask for home births because they don't want to travel and we can't force them to do otherwise."
Ms Blears insists the panel's decision is good news for the city and does not believe the plans will put women and children at risk.
She said: "The IRP has made a very strong recommendation that there should continue to be a midwife-led maternity service at Hope. I will be working with Hope to make sure that happens.
"My top priority was to make sure that children could still be born in Salford. We've managed to achieve that and I don't think that's a bad result."
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1/09/2007 at 16:22
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