Midwives' union has 'serious concerns' about Cumbria maternity proposal

The Royal College of Midwives has told ITV Border its members are very concerned about plans to centralise consultant-led maternity services in Carlisle.

The proposal means all women in West Cumbria who need a caesarean section would have to travel almost 40 miles to the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle. The West Cumberland Hospital would become a midwife-led unit.

ITV Border has obtained figures showing 23 women needed a grade 1, or crash caesarean last year at the WCH; 26 in 2014 and 38 in 2013.

National guidelines say a grade 1 section should be performed within 30 minutes.

Kirsty Cross needed a grade 1 section when her son Seb was born in 2014. Her pregnancy was low risk but went wrong during labour:

Only women classed as low risk are eligible to give birth at midwife led units.

The trust says just three of the women who had crash sections in 2015 would have been allowed to give birth at a midwife-led unit.

It says those three women all showed medical warning signs during labour which meant they would have been transferred to Carlisle at least three hours before the decision was taken to call a crash caesarean section.

But the midwives who work at the West Cumberland Hospital don't support plans to downgrade maternity services:

The trust which runs the West Cumberland Hospital says a shortage of children's doctors means change, of some kind, is essential:

A public consultation into proposed changes to healthcare in north, west and east Cumbria ends on Monday 19 December.