Mum says 'North Devon District Hospital nearly killed her' amid NHS maternity unit closure fears

Mum says 'North Devon District Hospital nearly killed her' amid NHS maternity unit closure fears Maternity services at North Devon District Hospital (NDDH) have been suspended, so pregnant women face dangerous delays and a drive of up to two hours to a hospital in Exeter instead Dangerous short staffing was known about for two years before a controversial maternity unit closure in Devon. One campaigning mum claimed North Devon District Hospital (NDDH) "nearly killed her" when giving birth and says pregnant women across the Southwest of England are frightened their babies could die. The decision to suspend maternity services at the most remote hospital in mainland England was discussed at an emergency meeting of Devon County Council. NHS bosses were grilled on the decision, which means pregnant women face up to a two-hour drive to give birth in Exeter, and has led to fears babies will be born in the back of cars and in lay-bys. Campaigning parent Katy Quick 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. “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." Three babies a day were typically born at the hospital site in Barnstaple but since last week, these pregnant women have had to get to Exeter or other hospitals in the region to give birth. The trust has contacted around 300 pregnant women across the region it serves - including north Devon and north Cornwall which has a lack of main roads and poor public transport - to make birth plans and discuss how they might get to another hospital. The number of babies born at the NDDH often rises in summer as the local population is swelled by holidaymakers. It comes after a series of maternity scandals at NHS trusts across the country where short staffing contributed to babies being left brain damaged and sometimes dying during or shortly after birth. Briefing papers provided for Monday's 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 a handful of absences due to early retirement and staff sickness triggered the plan for complete suspension of maternity services in July this year. It comes after 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 protest organisers, told trust bosses at the meeting: “[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’. “On Saturday I stood in Barnstaple with women due in weeks and they are really frightened. They are not fearful of the birth - which is inevitable - they are fearful of the miles and uncertainty that you have added ahead of them.” 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." Councillors said roads are often blocked in the region and parts of North Devon have no mobile phone reception. 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 “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."