STOP THE MATERNITY ROT!
The Rural Doctors Association of Australia (RDAA) has called on federal and State governments to maintain and reinstate maternity units at hospitals across rural Australia.
The RDAA also wants governments to actively support the provision of team-based maternity care where Doctors and midwives work closely together in providing local maternity services in rural communities.
RDAA president, Dr Peter Rischbieth, was responding to the Federal Government's release of a discussion paper, Improving Maternity Services in Australia, as the first step of its review into Australian Maternity services.
He said the paper came at a time when half of all rural maternity units across Australia had been closed in the past 12 years, forcing thousands of rural and remote women to travel to distant centres to give birth.
"There is an urgent need to reverse this trend, to return to the philosophy of providing local maternity care in the bush, and to recognise that team-based maternity care is by far the best way to ensure rural maternity services are sustainable into the future.: he said.
This needed to be supported by investments in hospitals and the country health workforce, but at present the trend was to close rural maternity units.
Dr Rischbieth said while Australia was one of the safest countries in the world in which to give birth, there was still room for improvement - particularly in rural and remote areas.
This included providing maternity care close to home so women were not required to travel hundreds of kilometres.
He said maternity care delivered by teams of GP's and midwives in rural communities, supported by specialist services, had been shown to be safe and highly practicable.
Charles Sturt University midwifery course co-ordinator, Dr Elaine Dietsch, said that it was "a matter of urgency" that the impact of maternity unit closures in rural and remote areas be addressed.
"Maternity unit closures have placed women living in rural and remote areas at incredible disadvantage and unnecessarily higher risk." she said.
"It is neither acceptable nor affordable for healthy women, their families or communities to have no choice but to be forcefully evacuated from their own rural communities to give birth.
"Nor is there any evidence to demonstrate that it improves health outcomes."
Comments on the discussion paper and submissions to the review will close on October 31.
Details of the review and discussion paper can be found on the federal Health Department website
Department of Health and Ageing - Maternity Services Review - Overview
Federal Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said she expected a report from the review group by December.
