CUMH and others in "blatant non-compliance" with HSE's latest Covid maternity restriction advice, campaigner says
A March for Maternity protest is due to take place at 1pm today outside the Dáil.
Continued rules restricting access for the partners of pregnant women in maternity services, including in Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH), are in “blatant non-compliance” with the latest HSE guidelines, a Cork campaigner has said.
Linda Kelly, an organiser of the March for Maternity which takes place at Dáil Éireann today, said CUMH has continued to restrict access for partners when pregnant women require emergency care, to impose time limits on post-partum stays, and to deny partners access to antenatal appointments, despite new HSE guidance which came into effect on September 13.
“Under the guidelines, they are now meant to allow you to have a partner if you need to go to the emergency room, for example,” Ms Kelly said. “Going to the emergency room when you’re pregnant is a very daunting, scary prospect. But in CUMH, they still won’t allow it: your partner will be stopped at the door and told not to go any further.”
“Campaigning for over a year”
Supporters of the #BetterMaternityCare campaign gathering at the Dáil today are calling for “pre-pandemic hospital access for one nominated support partner” across all 19 Irish maternity hospitals, she said.
“We’ve been campaigning for over a year now for the HSE to review and lift the partner restrictions that are currently in place across all maternity services in the country.”
September’s new HSE guidelines still impose unnecessary restrictions, Ms Kelly and fellow campaigners believe, but many maternity hospitals have yet to even fully implement these guidelines.
“The guidelines aren’t even being implemented at the most basic standard in most hospitals,” Ms Kelly said. “The HSE have told us that the level of compliance across the 19 hospitals is not at the level they would like it to be at.”
Varying levels of Covid-19 restrictions for the partners of pregnant and labouring women in maternity hospitals have been disputed for over a year now, with many women sharing stories of undergoing labour, miscarriage, stillbirth and the postpartum period without the support of their partners or with limited access to them.
The issue has been raised in the Dáil on numerous occasions and the Taoiseach said he believed all restrictions on partner access had become unnecessary in May of this year.
Other political commentators including West Cork TD Holly Cairns have stated that partners should not be considered “visitors” at the birth of their babies.
Safety risk
The continued and varying restrictions themselves constitute a safety risk to pregnant and labouring women, Ms Kelly and other campaigners including AIMS Ireland say.
“There’s a need for infection control measures and we don’t dispute that,” Ms Kelly said.
“But it’s not safe that people are delaying going to hospital when in labour because they don’t want to be separated from their partner. It’s not safe to leave people on their own for significant periods of time in the post-partum period without access to support. And it’s not safe in terms of the mental health impacts of these things.”
“There’s well-documented evidence in the UK that the lack of partner support is linked to increased interventions like C-sections and other interventions at a higher rate than pre-Covid.”
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has “ignored” requests for a meeting by campaigners, Ms Kelly said, and a range of approaches to allowing full partner access, including antigen testing, had not been considered.
She believes the lack of female representation at a decision-making level has been a factor in the discrepancy between how maternity service restrictions are being lifted compared to restrictions in other areas of society including sports and entertainment.
“The cabinet sub-committee on Covid doesn’t have a single woman sitting on it,” she said. “Giving birth, or losing a pregnancy, because people are attending maternity services across the whole gamut of experience, are life-transforming experiences for women. The lived experience of what that does to you is not understood by those making the decisions.”
Ms Kelly herself gave birth to her second daughter, Amy-Kate, in CUMH in July 2020 and her husband was not allowed to attend mother and baby at all under the restrictions then in place.
“I was on my own after a c-section with a newborn for three days,” she says. “There are no words to describe the loneliness of the experience. My husband missed those first three days of our daughter’s life.”
Still no roadmap
Ms Kelly expressed frustration that, even as anticipated further easing of broader societal Covid-19 restrictions on October 22 seems set to go ahead, there is still no roadmap for a complete lifting of restrictions in maternity services in sight.
“The country is going to move out of the emergency stage of the pandemic on October 22,” she said. “We’re asking hospitals to move to a situation where there is a pre-pandemic level of access for one support partner.”
“When I started campaigning, I didn’t think we were going to end up having to march in front of the Dáil just to get a very sensible solution to this issue.”
CUMH response
The HSE’s new guidelines were published on September 3 came into effect on September 13.
However, CUMH’s last Coronavirus safety notice regarding visits was updated on the 16th of August.
Maternity hospitals imposing restrictions on access to partners outside of those recommended must provide a “documented risk assessment, that is reviewed regularly and that is readily available to women and their support partners,” to rationalise the decision and provide a clear pathway for families wishing to query or complain about restrictions, the HSE’s September guidelines say.
Tripe + Drisheen requested a link to, or copy of, the current publicly available risk assessment document from CUMH.
A PR person representing CUMH said nothing could be forwarded in time for this article’s publication because “HSE require hospital management to always approve what is sent to the media.”
Tripe + Drisheen will update this article in line with our back-editing policy as soon as CUMH provides either the risk assessment or the reason why none is available.