It has been revealed that last year one of Britain’s leading hospitals was forced to turn down 518 requests to treat seriously ill premature babies because it did not have necessary resources.
St George’s hospital in south London closed its doors to hundreds of premature baby arrivals 71 times in the past six months due to lack of space. The hospital has five cot spaces which are unused because they cannot afford nurses for them.
This meant that hundreds of new mothers and sick infants had to travel large distances in search for another bed. Across the country problems with understaffing means that hospitals often have to refuse treatment to children despite having free beds. Honorary secretary for the British Association for Perinatal Medicine, Dr Andrew Lyon, said this was not an isolated issue. “Saint George’s probably had a bad time last year, but this is a national problem.”
Pressures on resources have raised questions as to whether the NHS should set limits on the amount of money spent on neonatal care, and whether it is necessary for doctors to continually push the boundaries in reviving younger babies.
Next month, a landmark report from an expert panel on neonatal care by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is expected to reject calls for national limits on viability - in Holland doctors cannot revive children under the age of 25 weeks – arguing that babies must be treated individually.
However, debate among British doctors over the advantages of treating young children still rages, with babies born at 23 weeks routinely surviving. Dr Sandy Calvert, a consultant neonatologist at St George’s, said her own unit did not resuscitate 22-week-old babies, but she is aware that a hospital in north London does. “If you want my personal opinion, I think we should be concentrating on improving the quality of survival rather than trying to get younger and younger babies to survive.”
As well as medical advances which keep an increased number of babies alive, pressures on neonatal wards have also risen due to the IVF boom which causes a large number of multiple births. These are more likely to be premature. While adults and children in intensive care have one nurse per patient, the ratio for babies is generally two babies for each nurse.
October 2006 | 
Abortion Time Limit Cut?
