Analysis: Can Shannon Fentiman finally fix maternity basket case?

After the new health minister’s two predecessors failed to fix Queensland’s maternity crisis, dare we say things are looking up, asks Jackie Sinnerton.

In 2019 I wrote a series of stories for this newspaper under the title Bush Baby Crisis.

Shock data from despairing doctors revealed that babies born in Queensland country towns where maternity services had closed were dying at a much higher rate than those in other rural centres.

The series revealed that mothers were being given DIY birthing kits in case they didn’t make it to the closest maternity units, hundreds of kilometres away.

Mothers showed us their baby birth certificates where the places of birth were highway exits.

It was Third World stuff.

Then health minister Steven Miles set up a maternity task force to improve services.

In 2023 who could have imagined that things could have worsened?

Where once it was small rural maternity units that were forced on bypass we are now seeing big regional cities like Gladstone have their doors shut to full maternity services.

We are again seeing women birthing on busy highways as they are detoured to units hundreds of kilometres away.

We have reported that women are choosing to free-birth with no medical help rather than hit the road.

The crisis continues.

Steven Miles, Yvette D’Ath and Shannon Fentiman

In 2019, when Mr Miles reached out to the federal government for help to fix birthing services, he was told it was a state issue and the SOS was knocked back.

Yvette D’Ath took over from Miles and inherited the problems. Maternity services were one of the biggest thorns in her side.

Now we have Shannon Fentiman, a fresh new face in the midst of this never-ending saga. Can she do what her predecessors failed to?

To be fair, Ms Fentiman has come out of the gate in a no-nonsense way.

She was only a day in office when she was on the ground in Gladstone talking to the mothers affected.

She met with National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists president Gino Pecoraro, who has been campaigning hard for the state government to liaise with the Federal Government to work towards solutions and to understand the need for private and public obstetrics to work together.

Well done to the new minister for inviting a federal representative to the maternity roundtable meeting later this month.

Dare we say things are looking up?