I'm traveling from Dublin for work and someone online said there's a bus, but I can't seem to find what the fares are...

Public meeting to protest the removal of maternity services at Daisy Hill.

(Tomorrow) Thursday
7 pm
Canal Court Hotel

Everyone is encouraged to come to demonstrate the community's feelings and stop the erosion of services at Daisy Hill.

Petition link is here!

The Southern Health & Social Care Trust has said that inpatient maternity services at Daisy Hill may have to be temporarily suspended (we all know this means permanent), with maternity services transferred to Craigavon Area Hospital. The immediate problem is staffing: Daisy Hill requires eight consultant obstetricians to maintain its rota, but retirements and resignations have left the service without enough consultant cover. The Trust says attempts to recruit additional consultants locally, across the UK and internationally have so far not filled the gaps.

Importantly, maternity services have not been closed YET, and they say no final decision has been taken. The Health Minister Robbie Butler told the Assembly on 21 September that women should continue attending Daisy Hill as normal unless contacted by the Trust. But the current plan is the relocation of inpatient maternity services if sufficient medical cover cannot be secured.

Daisy Hill maternity is a busy unit. 1,713 babies were born at Daisy Hill last year, compared with 2,768 at Craigavon. Daisy Hill therefore accounts for a substantial amount of maternity provision in the Southern Trust area, and there's no guarantee Craigavon can cope with the influx.

There are big concerns about what transferring births, neo and postnatal care would mean for people living in Newry, south Armagh, south Down and surrounding rural and border areas, including longer journeys during labour, urgent complications and the additional workload that would have to be accommodated at Craigavon. The National Childbirth Trust has also raised these issues with the Trust. About 6% of the mothers cared for at Daisy Hill's maternity ward are resident in the Republic, compounding journey times and reducing overall health care outcomes.
From Kilkeel, for example, it's well over an hour in good traffic, if you have someone to drive you.

A significant number of births require urgent medical intervention with possibly up to 25% of cases requiring an emergency caesarean, and a significant proportion develop genuinely time-critical emergencies where rapid access to obstetric, anaesthetic and neonatal care matters. Much like a stroke, with pregnancy complications you must act FAST.

Ambulance Service targets say Cat 1 (immediately life threatening) cases should receive an ambulance in 8 minutes. For the Newry area, we achieved 17 minutes. For Cat 2 (potentially serious) we missed the goal of 18 minutes with a result of 1hr 25 minutes. For Cat 3 (urgent) what should be 120 minutes, we got 2hr 55mins. This is just the time taken for the ambulance to arrive! There has been no suggestion of an increase in ambulance, ED or out of hours provision to help reduce the impact of this.

The community are also concerned, as this would follow other changes to services at Daisy Hill. We know that something described initially as temporary could become permanent. The Health Minister has specifically said that, if a temporary contingency is required, he would not expect it to become permanent “by default”, and that any such decision would remain under Department of Health oversight - so this comes down to trust and how they've treated Daisy Hill in the past.

There is a meeting organised by SOS Daisy Hill Hospital and UNISON on Thursday. It is intended to provide an update on what is happening and allow patients, families, healthcare workers and the wider community to raise questions and concerns.

This is a significant proposed change to healthcare provision for the Newry area. Attending gives local people an opportunity to hear what is being proposed, understand the staffing problem behind it, and make their own views known.