Call for national roadmap for maternity hospital restrictions

A "postcode lottery" continues to exist for pregnant women and their partners experiencing varying levels of Covid-19 related hospital access, a prominent campaigner has said.

Linda Kelly of the Better Maternity Care campaign was responding to welcome rule changes at the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) Holles Street in Dublin, but said a roadmap for all other hospitals was badly needed.

Since the onset of the pandemic there has been ongoing controversy surrounding public health restrictions in maternity hospitals and the effects they have had on partners missing key moments in the care and experience of childbirth.

On Thursday, there was some movement at the NMH, which announced that partners can now attend inpatient wards without restriction and when a mother is in labour.

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It also said they can attend 20-week scans, the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit (EPAU) and any consultations that take place in the Emergency Department. There is unrestricted access for parents with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.

While welcoming the key changes to access, Ms Kelly told RTÉ’s Drivetime programme that clarity was required regarding the initial 12-week scan which was not referenced in the NMH statement.

However, she said she had heard from people after the announcement “so totally relieved that they don’t need to have to worry about when their partners are going to be able to come in to see them or their baby, or that they’re going to be separated at some point during the labour process”.

This was particularly true of ED consultations, she said, noting that having to attend there was “rife with stress and anxiety”.

However, Ms Kelly said that although welcome, the picture continued to be mixed across the country and that a plan was required to usher in change elsewhere.

"For women who are attending other hospitals in other parts of the country, they will find the news today very, very tough because if you're going in to have a baby today in Limerick... your partner can only visit you for 45 minutes and it's a dedicated time in the evening which is very, very difficult if you have other children," she said. "So the postcode lottery continues with the maternity services."

Ms Kelly has called for a national roadmap at the end of August.

The NMH also said it had not conducted verifiable surveys of mothers or their partners’ vaccination status but that available information indicated “take-up rates to be reasonably high and infection rates low”.

Earlier this week, Dublin’s Rotunda maternity hospital pointed to “a significant increase” in pregnant women contracting severe Covid-19 infections. Defending its ongoing regime of restricted access, it said just 39 per cent of inpatients and 41 per cent of visiting partners were fully vaccinated.