Health Ministry prepares changes for parturients. Small delivery rooms to be abolished?

Deputy Health Minister Tomasz Maciejewski, a gynecologist, obstetrician, perinatologist and former director of the Mother and Child Institute in Warsaw, was not the first time in the Sejm to speak outright about the need to eliminate some maternity wards - shortly after taking office he expressed such a view at the Health Committee. At the Sejm meeting, he announced that a meeting with specialists in obstetrics, gynecology and neonatology will be held on September 26, during which a package of solutions for hospitals from which maternity wards will disappear is to be discussed.

This is not new: such solutions were also discussed under Izabela Leszczyna. There was talk, among other things, of providing a dedicated ambulance to transport women whose labor began suddenly to the nearest hospital with a maternity ward, while the Minister of Health and the President of the National Health Fund also promised - early in their term - to develop a special financial support mechanism that would help maintain delivery rooms in hospitals independently providing medical care within a radius of several dozen kilometers. Hospitals without birthing rooms would also have dedicated "birthing beds" with midwives on duty - in situations where transportation for medical reasons would not be possible, a hospital without a birthing room would have to accommodate the delivery. Importantly, the maintenance of such a "birthing room" would be financed on a lump sum basis - the hospital would receive money even if, for example, several babies were born in a year.

- At the Health Ministry, we are working on legislation to introduce solutions for women giving birth in areas without labor wards. In the fourth quarter, we will propose changes to provide care for women giving birth in areas that do not have the capacity to continue maternity wards," Maciejewski explained to the Sejm, stressing that the elimination of gynecological wards is due to demographic trends and the declining number of births. - This year there will be only 220,000, while at the beginning of the 21st century there were half a million, he stressed.

The Health Ministry estimates that the problem of exclusion (living more than 40 minutes by car from a hospital with a delivery room) affects about 7,000 women of childbearing age. - Not every one of these women is pregnant, of course, but we care a great deal about each of them, and we will try to provide this assistance," the deputy minister assured, adding that the ministerial proposal is intended to ensure the safety of pregnant women and those giving birth in areas where there are traffic problems.