Campaigners express disappointment after rural healthcare meeting postponed by government
Video report by ITV News reporter Barnaby Papadopulos
Campaigners in Galloway have expressed disappointment after a meeting with the Scottish Government's petition committee was cancelled at short notice.
Members of the Galloway Community Hospital Action Group are among those urging the government to establish an agency advocating for better rural healthcare. They, along with campaigners from the Isle of Skye and Caithness, first started a petition in 2020.
On Monday they were meant to meet with the petitions committee to give evidence - but this meeting was postponed until next month at the earliest.
Angela Armstrong said she was "disappointed" with the news.
"We'd all already planned what we were going to say," she said. "Hopefully, come January in the beginning of the year, hopefully this will happen again because it does matter."
Claire Fleming told ITV News that one of her friends once gave birth in a lay-by whilst travelling to Dumfries to give birth.
When she herself was suffering from sickness, she said she'd regularly have to make the one and a half hour trip from Glenluce down to Dumfries to get treatment.
"It's awful at the best of times, but being sick on the road just added to that. It meant my husband had to take time off. His work sometimes meant that the children had to be looked after by somebody else or taken out of school.
"You don't know how long you're going to be down there for, so it just really impacted everything."
In 2012 Claire was told she'd lost her baby in Stranraer - and says she had to go to Dumfries to deliver it.
"At the time I was quite numb. So I didn't really understand the enormity of it.
"My husband had just been told the same thing, and he was expected to just drive from that minute. We had to go down there to Dumfries.
"There was no time to process what was happening. I didn't really fully understand what I was going down to do."
Government 'committed' to ensuring safety of mothers and babies
In a statement the Scottish Government said: “The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that the high-quality maternity care delivered every day across Scotland is as safe as possible for mothers and babies."
“To help achieve improved overall care for remote, rural and island communities across Scotland, the National Centre for Remote & Rural Health and Care was launched in October.
"It is hoped that this will help to reduce remote, rural and island health and wellbeing inequalities through focused work on improving the sustainability, capacity, and capability of remote, rural and island Primary care and community-based workforce and service delivery."
The Dumfries and Galloway Health and Social Care Partnership added "A broad range of pre and post-natal services is now delivered from The Oak Tree Family Centre in Stranraer. Many of these services, including scans, were not routinely available in Wigtownshire before the centre opened in 2020."
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