Maternity services at North Devon District Hospital (NDDH) have been suspended, meaning pregnant women face dangerous delays and a drive of up to two hours to a hospital in Exeter instead. The decision, made due to a lack of consultants, has sparked fears that babies could be born in cars and lay-bys.
Mum's harrowing account
Campaigning parent Katy Quick told an emergency meeting of Devon County Council that the Landywell maternity unit at NDDH "nearly killed me" when she gave birth in 2022. She said: "Four years ago, the Landywell maternity unit at NDDH nearly killed me. I’m here to ask you to reopen it. In 2022 I gave birth to my second daughter. I knew something was really wrong and I wasn’t listened to. By the time anyone acted I was dying."
Ms Quick added: "The next morning a midwife sat on the end of my bed and she wept, not for herself, but for the care she hadn’t been able to give me. I and many others like me are the inevitable outcome of a unit of good people run into the ground over decades. Everyone with formal responsibility was aware."
Staffing crisis and impact
Briefing papers for the council meeting showed the NDDH maternity unit had been operating at the limits of safe staffing for the last two years. Lack of doctors was flagged as a major corporate risk last November before absences due to early retirement and sickness triggered the complete suspension of maternity services in July this year.
Three babies a day were typically born at the Barnstaple site, but now pregnant women must travel to Exeter or other hospitals. The trust has contacted around 300 pregnant women across the region, including north Devon and north Cornwall, which has poor main roads and public transport, to make birth plans. The number of births often rises in summer as holidaymakers swell the local population.
Protests and accountability questions
Hundreds of people, including pregnant women, protested against the closure in Barnstaple Square on Saturday for the 'Maternity Matters' demonstration. Ms Quick, one of the organisers, told trust bosses: "[Lack of doctors] was on a risk register. It’s in the board papers. The unit was and continues to be rated as 'Requires Improvement'."
Councillor Julian Brazil said: "The idea of suspending maternity services should never have been an option. I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that this situation has been allowed to happen… God forbid that there’s not a tragedy in this time." Councillor Paul Crabb asked: "Who is accountable if the first maternity death happens on the A361?"
Sam Higginson, chief executive of Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said: "This is a genuine national problem in terms of most [hospital] sites are running with gaps in their rotas. This has not been an easy decision at all because we have to see this in the context of what is the safest thing to do in what is a really challenging situation… It’s mission critical for us to get this temporary suspension lifted."
Vanessa Purday, chief medical officer at NDDH, said the decision to close the maternity unit "weighed heavy" on trust leaders and that it would be in place until at least the end of September as they tried to recruit. She said: "There is no doubt that as a small hospital, the most rural on the mainland, we face significant challenges in recruiting."
