[lettie]

The telegraph said that up to 2,400 babies who are normally born in Blackburn will be born in Burnley. Blackburn currently has nearly 4,000 births per year. Therefore not all babies will be born in Burnley. This government are looking to encourage women with normal pregnancies to deliver at home or in birth centres (which will be local). All the current research evidence shows that it is safer for women with normal pregnancies to deliver in these environments than in hospitals. Birth centres are run by midwives and tend not to have access to doctors, they provide a homely environment. As discussed in the hospital closure thread, we had birth centres for a long time.... Accy Vic, Rough Lee, Bramley Meade, Bull Hill, all of which were closed because it became the norm to go to hospital, therefore birth centres became less cost effective to keep open. The government are trying to reverse this trend now and have realised that it is more cost effective to encourage women to deliver normally, without interventions such as monitoring, epidural, artificial rupture of membranes etc. Research shows that one intervention leads to another and raises the chances of needing a forceps, ventouse or operative delivery. These interventions are not done in the home or birth centre environments and the majority of women need less pain relief as a result of being allowed to labour naturally.

There will still be babies born locally both in Blackburn, Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley. I am more concerned with the people of Burnley having to travel the extra few miles to A&E when they are in critical conditions..... It's bad enough that we have to go to Blackburn from Accrington.