Antrim Area Hospital to receive new mums

ANTRIM Area Hospital is set to receive women who were booked to have their babies delivered at Causeway Hospital in Coleraine, as health chiefs battle to organise resources in the face of an expected surge in Covid-19 patients.

The Health and Social Care (HSC) system has published plans aimed at protecting children’s and maternity services while releasing bed space to contribute to the overall response to the virus.

Children’s and maternity services will be temporarily reconfigured to free up to 130 beds during extreme surge in acute hospitals, which will be vital in treating the sickest patients and makes best use of our hospitals.

A regional plan has been agreed with all Trusts and paediatric units which contains a number of steps that can be triggered depending on the pressures on services.

Around 50 beds for adults could be made available when Step One is implemented in the days ahead.

The plan has been developed with paediatricians and children’s nurses from across Northern Ireland.

It is designed to protect children’s services and make sure babies and children who need urgent or emergency care are able to get that care from suitably qualified and experienced paediatric staff in a timely way.

While the plan includes a temporary reduction in inpatient paediatric services, every acute hospital will continue to have senior consultant paediatricians located in these facilities to assess and treat acutely unwell children.

The temporary measures are also designed to protect highly specialised paediatric services which are only available in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, and make sure they can continue even if many staff are absent because of illness. This is to make sure children in Northern Ireland can continue to access highly specialised and life-saving services such as Paediatric Intensive Care throughout the surge.

After careful consideration, it has also been agreed that while antenatal services will continue at Causeway Hospital, it is not possible to deliver babies in the Causeway Hospital during this surge period.

This is because the Causeway will not have enough skilled paediatricians available to provide emergency care to a baby born in distress throughout the 24 hour period.

To protect the wellbeing of mothers and babies, women booked to deliver in Causeway will be contacted and have their delivery transferred to Antrim or Altnagelvin Hospital.

Maternity services in Daisy Hill, South West Acute, Craigavon, Altnagelvin, Antrim, the Ulster and the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital (RJMH) will continue.

There will be daily monitoring and communication across the paediatric network during the surge to ensure there is enough paediatric capacity to deliver safe urgent and emergency care for children right across Northern Ireland.