Newborn's cries end an era at historic hospital

By MARTIN JOHNSTON and CLAIRE TREVETT

An era in New Zealand medical history ended yesterday when the last baby was born at National Women's in Epsom, the largest hospital of its type in New Zealand or Australia.

At the same time staff at the replacement maternity unit at the year-old Auckland City Hospital in Grafton were preparing for its first birth.

After years of planning and controversy, National Women's maternity, newborn and specialist services have shifted to the super-hospital, part of the Auckland District Health Board's $500 million hospital rebuilding programme.

Most of the shift is expected to be finished this week, but outpatient services and the fertility clinic will not move to their new home at the Greenlane Clinical Centre for several months.

Yesterday, 24 premature and/or sick babies were transferred from the old to the new neonatal intensive care unit and expectant mothers were told to go to the Grafton site rather than Epsom.

Some 250,000 babies were born at the old National Women's. The 12-storey, £3.3 million building opened in 1964, but the National Women's name had been used at the women's hospital next door from 1955.

By the 1990s, National Women's had become run down and was criticised for its old style "rugby-field" length wards. The then Auckland Healthcare crown health enterprise proposed demolishing it because of the costs of bringing it up to scratch.

But now it is being considered for use as offices or day-time health services, which the health board management say would not necessitate the costly upgrading required for an inpatient hospital.

The National Women's name is associated with both breakthroughs and scandal.

In 1962, it made international headlines for the world's first successful pre-birth blood transfusion, done by specialist Sir William Liley. The technique soon became established globally.

The Lawson quintuplets born at the hospital in 1965 were only the fifth surviving set of quins in the world and the first born in New Zealand.

In 1972, a trial at National Women's showed the effectiveness of giving steroids to women in premature labour to reduce deaths and lung problems in their babies.

But in 1988, the Cartwright report on the "unfortunate experiment" at the hospital became a watershed for patients' rights and informed consent in New Zealand.

The preceding inquiry was about some women given conservative treatment for early cervical cancer at at the hospital in the 1960s. They were unaware they were being used in an experiment to show that more-radical treatment was unnecessary.

Then in 1999, there was an inquiry into brain damage and several deaths among 13 premature babies who were given chest physiotherapy.

The plans to split up National Women's services and shift many of them across town drew opposition from women's health groups and doctors, and some instead wanted the old building refurbished.

Bed numbers at the new hospital have also been controversial. For National Women's, they are down to 168, including neonatal intensive care unit cots, from 197 early last year. For several years it has been shedding publicly funded beds and cots to other hospitals in the region, including privately owned Birthcare Auckland.

During the row last year over the health board's bid to scrap the name Starship from its children's hospital, it emerged it had also wanted to dump the National Women's name. After an outcry from the public and health workers it backed down on both and the women's facility became National Women's Health at Auckland City Hospital.

The management says that despite the difficulties of having doctors shuttle between two sites, housing acute services for all patients on one site is great for seriously unwell women and babies.