Northern Trust maternity services 'fragile, vulnerable and unsustainable'

Maternity services in the Northern Health Trust area are fragile, vulnerable and unsustainable, the trust has said, as it seeks a public consultation on their future.

It said consultant obstetrics and midwifery resources were spread too thinly across Antrim Area Hospital and Causeway Hospital in Coleraine.

Birth numbers in the Causeway Coast and Glens area have declined year-on-year.

The trust is seeking approval for a 14-week consultation.

It said the consultation will look at options for the "future provisions of acute maternity services".

"We urgently need to provide a model for maternity services that addresses current challenges, including issues to do with staffing and recruitment and neonatal care," a trust spokeswoman said.

She added there were "clinically-deliverable options" for providing a more sustainable and safe model.

"We have always stressed that we would try to make no permanent changes without full public consultation," she said.

"Our aim will be to ensure that people fully understand the need for change, the various options and their implications and that they have a real and meaningful chance to fully explore those options and have their say," she added

Maternity services are currently provided from the trust's two acute hospitals - Antrim and Causeway - and from a number of community-based settings including people's own homes.

About 4,000 women and their families are supported by the trust's services each year during pregnancy, birth and up to 28 days in the postnatal period.

The trust said that a maternity unit is considered small if it has less than 3,500 deliveries per year.

In the Causeway Hospital, the trust said the number of births has been decreasing each year and the number is expected to fall below 900 by the end of 2022.

The trust added that figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) suggest that over the next 20 years, the number of births in the Causeway area will fall by 11% and the population of older people over 75 years will grow by 65%.

The trust wants to have a new-build £150m Women and Children's Unit on the Antrim Hospital site.