{"id":645261,"date":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/645261\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T16:20:15","slug":"maternity-services-at-north-devon-hospital-remain-suspended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/645261\/","title":{"rendered":"Maternity services at north Devon hospital remain suspended"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trust said it began planning for a potential temporary suspension to services in July due to serious staffing issues.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of August, it said it had explored every option including securing locum cover and mutual aid support from partner organisations and concluded a temporary suspension was the best solution.<\/p>\n

A provisional reopening date was initially set for 29 September, however, bosses later said the service was not in a position to reopen then.<\/p>\n

Consultants have since said they have “no confidence”<\/a> in the ability of the executive board overseeing the hospital to ensure equitable, safe and sustainable local access to healthcare.<\/p>\n

The chief executive of Devon Antenatal Family Centre said she had noticed a rise in affected mothers opting for elected Caesarean sections to “reduce and minimise the risk of fast labours on the road” and the “unexpected coming to reality”.<\/p>\n

“Women are worried so they’re opting for a higher risk birth of having a Caesarean within a low risk pregnancy,” Mchomvu said.<\/p>\n

“Nobody is asking for an unsafe service to be reopened, that is not what anybody wants.<\/p>\n

“What we want is for the service to be reopened, but we want it reopened sustainably and for long term. We need to have a safe reliable service women can depend on when they need it regardless of when that might be.”<\/p>\n

In its latest update, external<\/a> the hospital trust said it knew the continued suspension was “causing worry and uncertainty”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The trust said it began planning for a potential temporary suspension to services in July due to serious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-645261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}