Removal of vital services due to lousy NHS management

The NHS has managed to get its self in a right mess over the past decade. Due to overspending and an overall unsuccessful budget management, it now has to cut many vital services to save money and to prevent further excess spending in the future. All hospitals will endure the consequences, from a reduction in cleaning staff to closure of wards.

All districts are facing huge cuts to their funding, with Oxford's alone being a staggering £33 million. Due to this, the Special Care Baby Unit at the Horton Hospital in Banbury is under threat with possible closure in 2008. Closure will result in obstetric services being downgraded to a midwife-led unit and being one of the furthest away from consultant support; 30 miles.

The possibility of the ward becoming midwife-led is understandably worrying. Any mother who finds herself in difficulty during childbirth will have to be transferred to Oxford, a measure in which delay costs lives to both mother and baby. Furthermore, staff at the Horton Hospital have repeatedly emphasized the risks of the proposal, with particular reference to a death of a child, who had to be transferred to the John Radcliffe for care because of pediatric services being cut 30 years ago at the SPCB, which were put back in place due to this. The distance between Banbury and Oxford hasnt changed, so why take the services away again and put mother and child at risk?

Futhermore, the closure of the ward is still very much possible, despite an NHS watchdog giving midwife-led birth centres a health warning after statistics found that babies have more chance of dying there than those delivered in a consultant based hospital, due to the lack of onsite emergency procedures such as a caesarean and resuscitation.

Again, like the previous two posts, this is an example of the NHS and other health agencies taking away vital care and support to patients due to their own mistakes. Rather than accepting that more funding is needed to provide full care, they take away the services to save money. Patricia Hewett should be working harder to get the funding, rather than sticking to a budget that is not enough to keep people alive!

Hopefully the various campaigns that are occuring across the country, such as the 'Save the Horton campaign' will continue their fight to keep wards open, such as the recent success in Cheltenham in which their local hospital was at risk.

www.keepthehortongeneral.org/