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Posted by Editor on 2nd March 2010 at 01:03 PM
Andy Burnham backs Salford mum's midwife campaign
by Tom Rodgers

At a house on Thorn St, Swinton, a campaign has been launched to save the midwife-led maternity unit (MLMU) at Salford Royal Hospital.

The Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham MP, joined local mums to talk about the possibilty of keeping the Salford Royal unit open that caters for 600 births per year.

Without the unit, local pregnant mums would have to go to Bolton or St Mary's in Manchester to give birth, which campaigners say is too far to go.

Midwives take full responsibilty for the unit, and there are already scores of similar units across the country.

Midwife-led units like this specialise in births with no medical intervention. "It's called the cascade effect," says chair of the campaign Lisa Keen. "Studies show that once you medically intervene in a birth, say with an epidural, there is a higher chance that you will have to intervene more and more seriously, perhaps leading to more invasive procedures like Caesarean sections, which take longer to recover from.

"What we're asking is that the Government and the Trust reconsider the possibility of keeping open the midwife-led maternity unit at Salford Royal."

Despite a deeply unpopular move to close the maternity unit at Salford Royal in 2007, Salford MP Hazel Blears is pushing to keep the MLMU open.

;'[A decision will be made on 12th March when the Salford NHS Foundation Trust board meets.

Report as offensive or innapropriate Comment by TomSO ( member )  4th March 2010
Well, fair comment, but because I only featured the leader of the campaign I considered there to be one "mum" so the apostrophe goes before the s. I am a pedant too, and I appreciate this! Tom

Report as offensive or innapropriate Comment by Guest  4th March 2010
salford mums' - S apostrophe !

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