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Supreme
Court
decision highlights
need for reform
©
Joint statement of the
National Birth Alliance
& Homebirth Association of Ireland
Today's
Supreme Court decision may not be the end of women's entitlement
to a free home birth service from the State. "Health boards
have discretion in this area, and we are appealing to them to
use it for the benefit of less well off women", said Krysia
Lynch Rybaczuk, PRO of the Home Birth Association. "We have
a Health Strategy that commits us to equity in health. Why should
home birth be a choice reserved for the rich?"
Marie
O'Connor of the National Birth Alliance blamed what she called
"the medical empire in maternity care" for today's Supreme
Court decision. "We live in such a deeply medicalised society
that, like fish who can't see water, we find it difficult to see
the monopoly that consultant obstetricians exercise over the services
for birth".
The
market for private maternity services is a highly lucrative one,
worth an estimated e50m annually. "Average obstetric incomes
are in the region of e500,000 yearly, and this is on top of a
public salary that starts, in the eastern region, at e114,000.
Obstetrics is a goldmine, and this goldmine is a huge barrier
to reform".
Independent
midwife Philomena Canning says that today's judgement under lines
the need for a complete overhaul of our maternity care system.
"Tomorrow sees the publication of a study showing that Caesarean
rates in Ireland have trebled in the last 20 years. Our system
has turned birth into an operation: two mothers in every five
give birth by Caesarean, forceps or vacuum extraction".
These
rates are not sustainable, O'Connor points out. "The cost
to the State of the present doctor-driven system is astronomical.
We are forcing women to have an excess of costly medical treatment,
while at the same time denying them access to the midwifery model
of care".
Given
the Government's commitment to driving the Hanly agenda, the need
for local services will become acute. "Here again, consultant
obstetricians are blocking the development of the services. If
they, or their representative bodies, have decided to pull out
of eight or nine hospitals around the country, then they should
move over and make way for midwives, and allow them to manage
the services that they have been providing all along".
Many
women want a birth that is low-tech and drug-free, options that
in hospital are rarely open to them. Rybaczuk says that in today's
overcrowded maternity units, active medical management is the
rule. "The more doctors intervene, the more adverse outcomes
occur, the more parents sue, the more doctors intervene. It is
a vicious circle".
Canning
makes the point that we have opted for a very expensive model
of maternity care: "A normal hospital birth costs the State
e4-5000, while home birth only costs e2000". Then there is
the cost of obstetric insurance, currently costing e400,000 per
consultant: "The taxpayer is picking up the tab for a model
of care that is wasteful, expensive and unsustainable. Meanwhile
midwives are leaving the services in their hundreds, and mothers
are suffering from the iron rule of obstetrics in overcrowded
labour wards".
For
further details, please call:
Home Birth Association
Krysia Lynch-Rybaczuk
Telephone: 01 660 3499
Mobile: 087 754 3751
Independent Midwife ERHA
Philomena Canning
Telephone: 01 495 1902
Mobile: 087 290 0017
National Birth Alliance
©
Marie O’Connor
Telephone: 01 838 8168
Mobile: 087 918 2722
© National
Birth Alliance
An Chomhghuallaiocht Naisiunta Breithe |
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