Fury over "normal" ambulance births from Wycombe Hospital (From Bucks Free Press)

Fury over "normal" ambulance births from Wycombe Hospital

3:00pm Wednesday 2nd December 2009

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A DAD whose wife gave birth in an ambulance has hit out at a health chief for saying such deliveries are “normal from time-to-time”.

Mark Stacey spoke out after NHS Buckinghamshire chief executive Ed Macalister-Smith was quizzed over maternity changes to Wycombe Hospital.

He said: “It is clearly unacceptable to have any number of births happen in ambulances although they will happen from time-to-time.

“It is a normal part of life to happen from time-to-time.”

He added: “There will always be some people who don’t make it to hospital.”

The hospital lost doctor-led births in October. Lower risk births only are delivered by midwives.

We reported how one mum gave birth in an ambulance after being rushed from Wycombe to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury to see a doctor (see link, bottom of story).

And Mr Stacey’s wife Victoria, 33, delivered son Finn in an ambulance outside Eden shopping centre, High Wycombe as it did not make it in time to her planned birth at Stoke.

Mr Stacey, of Croftwood, Totteridge, said: “It is not normal and it is not acceptable.

“We should have a hospital close enough so you should not have the trauma of having a baby in the back of an ambulance.”

Yet Mr Macalister-Smith told members of Buckinghamshire County Council that the maternity changes were the result of “clear national advice about the size of units in terms of the number of doctors” to provide safe care. There are not enough staff to do this, he said.

Furious Liberal Democrat councillor Julia Wassell said: “It is time you told the women of Wycombe when you are going to open the maternity unit.”

Mr Macalister-Smith said: “I simply can’t agree. There are a significant number of women giving birth in Wycombe.”

And he backed the removal of serious trauma A&E cases such as major car smashes from Wycombe in 2005. Patients now go to Slough or Aylesbury.

He said: “It is absolutely clear that the outcomes for patients are very much better if they spend longer in an ambulance and get to major trauma centres.”

This is instead of them being taken to the nearest hospital to be stabilised and then transferred, he said.

But he said the trust was working to improve ambulance response times, managed by South Central Ambulance Service.

Latest figures show 65 per cent of life-threatening calls were got to in eight minutes against a 75 per cent target.

Changing management practices and not adding more “expensive” paramedic crews was key, he said.

Bosses have said many patients can be seen in the community, such as at GP surgeries, than in hospital.

Yet Councillor Wendy Mallen, the council’s health spokesman, said: “A lot of the surgeries are not capable of offering this sort of service.

“A lot of the GPs are in the wrong place, especially in High Wycombe.”

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