Campaigner takes baby unit case to Health Secretary (From Bury Times)

Campaigner takes baby unit case to Health Secretary

11:00am Tuesday 4th October 2011 in News

A LEADING campaigner fighting to retain maternity services at Fairfield Hospital is to put her case directly to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

Fairfield Baby Lifeline Society vice-chairman Sharron Entwistle, pictured, is to meet the health chief tomorrow.

It is not known whether she will be joined by others opposed to the loss of the hospital’s maternity and special care baby unit from next March.

In July, health chiefs pulled the plug on a midwife-led unit which would have allowed some births at the hospital. From March 2012, mums-to-be will have no choice but to go outside Bury unless they have a home birth.

Now, however, Sharron Entwistle has had an earlier request to meet the Health Secretary over the controversial shutdown issue approved.

She said: “I will be meeting him on Friday after I’d earlier written to him. The obvious thing I will be asking him is why he is closing the maternity and baby care unit when he made a pre-election promise that it would stay open.”

She will also stress to the Health Secretary that the closure is set against the backdrop of a forecast of a significant increase in the birth date between now and 2015.

The decision to shut the unit is part of a multi-million pound reorganisation of Greater Manchester’s women’s, children’s and neonatal services.