Births temporarily suspended at Eastbourne hospital

Homebirth services in the town have also been temporarily suspended by the health trust which runs the Kings Drive hospital.

Instead all births will take place in the maternity unit at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings.

The Covid-19 pandemic is being blamed for the suspension by East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust.

A trust spokesperson said, “Across Sussex, NHS trusts including ESHT have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend homebirth services and births at stand-alone midwifery units – including our unit at Eastbourne hospital.

“We have made this decision because the increasing cases of Covid-19 locally have put our local ambulance service under significant pressure and they cannot guarantee a timely response to calls for an ambulance transfer in an emergency.

“This includes attending home addresses for complications that can arise during home births, and attending for complications that can arise at stand-alone midwife led units where there may need to be a transfer to another maternity unit. This means that giving birth at home or at a stand-alone midwife presents a higher degree of risk.

“We are so sorry if these changes cause you distress. We know this will be really disappointing if you had planned to give birth at home or at Eastbourne Maternity Unit at the DGH.

“Our teams are working hard to ensure that our maternity services at Conquest Hospital are as accommodating as possible and we want to make sure that your birth is as close as possible to the experience you expected.

“All of our midwives are skilled and experienced in natural birth provision and Conquest Hospital offers the space and staff to readily support the number of births we expect and will mean that we can maintain the ethos of midwife-led care that is so important to you and East Sussex families.

“The maternity unit has its own dedicated entrance which means that you do not need to access the unit through the main hospital.

“At the Conquest hospital we are also reserving and extending designated rooms for midwife-led care; allocating the EMU and home-birth midwives to provide midwife-led care on the unit as much as possible; and continuing and promoting the use of our water-birth facilities as long as it is safe to do so.

“We remain fully committed to providing a full range of birth experiences and will reopen EMU and our home birth facilities as soon as it is safe to do so.”