Review Too Little Too Late For Lost Babies

ACT New Zealand Health Spokesman and Wellington-based MP Heather Roy today demanded to know why another baby had to die before Health Minister David Cunliffe stopped sitting on his hands and took action to address the Wellington Region's crisis in maternity services.

"Three years ago, the coroner called for an inquiry into the Wellington Region's maternity services - a call that was totally ignored by the Labour Government," Mrs Roy said.

"Yet everyone knows that maternity services have been in crisis for all of this time. Many women cannot find a midwife to deliver their baby, and Capital & Coast DHB has closed maternity beds due to midwife shortages. GPs throughout the country have been driven out of delivering babies, leaving women with few options when it comes to obstetric healthcare.

"The death of yet another baby in Wellington has finally prompted the Minister to order an inquiry - but this is too little too late for those women who already lost babies while Labour sat on its hands and ignored a situation that it was responsible for creating in the first place.

"Further, Prime Minister Helen Clark must take some responsibility: as Health Minister during the 1980s, she instigated the changes to midwifery that have led to the current crisis situation that exists in Wellington and around the country.

"If Mr Cunliffe were truly running the show, he would do his level best to provide women with a range of maternity service choices - he could start by using his self-touted competence as Minister to get doctors back into delivering babies," Mrs Roy said.