Baby readmitted 12 times

A Wellington baby has been readmitted to hospital 12 times since her birth two months ago after she and her mother picked up infections in hospital, New Zealand First says.

The party's health spokeswoman, Barbara Stewart, said standards of maternity care were "clearly deteriorating" and accused the minister of "procrastination".

A Health Ministry report that showed potentially fatal postnatal infections were on the rise should prompt "more decisive action" from the minister, she said.

"Undertaking to investigate ways to improve gathering more complete statistics is a soft option. It also defers any action years into the future."

She knew of one Wellington mother who gave birth last November by caesarean, after which both she and her baby suffered from hospital-acquired infections.

"To date the baby has been readmitted to hospital 12 times and the mother five times, and their problems have not been resolved.

"There is definitely room for improvement in maternity services and the sooner the better."

Health Minister Pete Hodgson announced on Thursday that the Government would not be following a recommendation by Wellington coroner Garry Evans for an independent review of maternity services after investigating the deaths of two babies.

Mr Hodgson said he was confident that, overall, New Zealand had high- quality maternity services, though "there is work to be done".

He acknowledged there were gaps in data, and said the Government would consider setting up a database of maternal and perinatal deaths.

His decision has dismayed some doctors, who say simply monitoring deaths will not give an adequate picture of what is going on in the sector - and serious problems could be hidden by a lack of quality controls.

Medical Association maternity spokesman Don Simmers said the minister's decision was especially worrying in light of the "alarming" increase in the number of women contracting potentially fatal infections after giving birth, which could signal problems with quality of care.

A Health Ministry report released on Thursday showed a rise in the number of post-birth infections in women, from nine in every 1000 deliveries in 2000 to about 11.5 in 2003.

Dr Simmers said the increase could be caused by several factors, from dirty conditions in hospitals to inadequate wound care and poor surgical technique.

He did not agree with the findings of a maternity mortality review committee that a retrospective audit would be "too difficult".

A review using sampling of patient notes could be "easily done" at a cost of around $400,000, he said.

"There are important things we don't know: how many blood transfusions are given; how many women suffered birth injuries that required specialist intervention; how many babies have jaundice, chlamydia or eye infections?

"These are simple questions that could be asked of the system to see how things are going," Dr Simmers said.

"It wouldn't be appropriate to have a huge royal commission of inquiry with all the bells and whistles and political machinations, etc.

"But wouldn't it be nice if we knew where we've come from so we know where we're going to?

"We have had a revolutionary experiment in maternity care and we don't know whether it's providing a high-quality system or not."

The New Zealand chairman of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Dr Bill Ridley, said midwives' "fear of medical intervention" led to access problems in hospitals.

- NZPA