Editorial: Regional Queenslanders are being dudded when it comes to health services

It is gobsmacking that the Queensland government has health services to deteriorate to the point that mothers are being forced to travel elsewhere to give birth, writes the editor, and the public expects quick and decisive action.

It is becoming clear that regional Queenslanders are being dudded when it comes to health services.

And it is particularly affecting expectant mothers, with maternity services proving to be shambolic across the state.

For example Gladstone – a city of more than 60,000 people – can no longer facilitate women giving birth, unless it is a scheduled C-section.

It is gobsmacking that the Queensland government has allowed the situation in that town to deteriorate to the point that mothers are being forced to travel elsewhere to give birth.

This is a town that has pumped billions into the state’s coffers over the years on the back of mining and gas booms, yet the thanks it gets is sub-par hospital facilities.

In Saturday’s The Courier-Mail, Biloela woman Gabrielle Rousseau recounted her experience at Gladstone Hospital in the lead-up to the stillbirth of her daughter, Fallon.

She had been told at 27 weeks she could not see a doctor until she reached 30 weeks’ gestation – and she believes her baby could have been saved had she not been turned away.

Her story is heartbreaking, and unfortunately there are likely to be other Queensland mothers with similar horror stories.

As reported today, mothers in regional Queensland also have to travel if their unborn child will require a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) bed.

Gabrielle Rousseau, 31, is demanding answers after the still birth of her daughter Fallon and additional trauma that followed at Gladstone Hospital.

Public NICU beds are only available at three hospitals in this state – the Royal Brisbane and Women’s hospital, and the Townsville and Gold Coast university hospitals.

Yes, they are expensive and the staff manning those units must be highly trained. But surely there is scope for more regional hospitals to have these facilities?

There’s roughly 1300km between Brisbane and Townsville. To have no public NICU beds in between is less than ideal.

It is time for Health Minister Yvette D’Ath to take a good look at how maternity services in this state are operating, and get a plan in place to fix it.

Her response to heartbreaking revelations that women who lost their children were still being forced to stay on the same floor as new parents and their babies – despite her pledge to put a stop to it – was cold and underwhelming.

“I understand that from time to time those women will be aggrieved by those decisions, but it has to be done on clinical grounds,” she said.

Ms D’Ath was, however, close to tears – and rightly so – when she made public the damning report into Mackay Base Hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology unit, which outlined the deaths of three babies over a decade that were linked to the inadequacies of that unit.

Although it must be noted that when the opposition raised issues at Mackay last year, the Premier accused it of “scaremongering”.

Scandals will always haunt whoever is in charge of the health portfolio.

But it is how Ms D’Ath deals with them that matters. The public expects the Health Minister to act quickly and decisively.

The lack of maternity services in some regional areas has gone on too long.

Action must be taken now, or the situation risks deteriorating even further.

And Queenslanders deserve better than that.

Originally published as Editorial: Regional Queenslanders are being dudded when it comes to health services