“We want the absolute best for our patients all the time.” Liverpool Women’s Hospital doctors said on the BBC program ‘Hospital’ on 25th January 2019

The staff also stressed the importance of the hospital as a safe space for women.

Some of the great work Liverpool Women’s Hospital does was shown on the programme. Oddly the very real problems were presented, not as a consequence of underfunding, cuts and privatization, overworked staff and faults in the NHS structures, but as a consequence of it being a standalone hospital!

Liverpool Women’s hospital operates in a climate of cuts and shortages, like all the NHS in 2019. The basic maternity tariff is inadequate. There are significant cuts, underfunding and staff shortages across the NHS. There is a shortage of doctors, midwives, nurses, and other key staff groups. The bureaucrats seem to grow in number. Financial consultants, not the medical ones, are making loads of money from the NHS. This arises from Government policy, and only from that. Somehow this did not feature in the programme.

We have to fight for a fully funded NHS, stop the cuts, train more doctors and nurses. We want to Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital. Keep the only women’s hospital in the land!

The move to the Royal has not been funded, at least not this year. If it had been approved earlier it would have been a PFI! We oppose this move, we oppose the PFI! A move to the Royal site, especially in its current chaos, would be wrong in many ways.

We want people also to recognize that particulates from diesel damages babies. Most of the rest of the world has got this message. The move to the Royal presents significant problems in putting the babies into a hazardous situation. That is not the only reason we oppose that move.

Liverpool Women’s Hospital should stay where it is and be improved on site. Already £15 million is being spent on upgrading the neonatal provision. Moving the hospital would be a major mistake.

All of the NHS is at risk. In this situation, we need to defend what we have “What we have we hold!” Other experiences of closures have not been good ones. Other experiences of building at the Royal and building using PFI were catastrophic.

This is the only hospital fully devoted to the needs of women, in the whole of the UK. Women’s health needs much more research and more focussed research. Young women and girls are still crippled by period pain, not all contraception is safe, fertility is problematic for many and women, on average, live with ill health for 18 years.

We need research and dedicated treatment to prevent stillbirths and into birth injuries. We need research and dedicated treatment to deal with post-natal injuries to women

We need to stop  low birth weight and illnesses in babies

We need research into  women’s mental health

For all of this, we need the emphasis and focus on women.

Problems with recruiting Cancer specialists

The programme stressed the shortages of consultants and difficulties in recruiting to the  Liverpool Women’s Hospital. A clear future for the Liverpool Women’s will surely help this.

The problem’s with cancer recruitment are not confined to Liverpool Women’s Hospital. This problem must be addressed nationally and locally. Of course, doctors from different hospitals should cooperate, as the surgeon described. Such cooperation is hindered financially and organisationally by the  Foundation Trust system. This system has to go to be replaced by a system that promotes cooperation and cuts undue bureaucracy.

The Women’s Hospital Building

The hospital is a good building, better than many newer ones
Liverpool Women’s Hospital is 23 years old. It is a good hospital building only a few years older than the first of the flawed PFI hospitals built across the country. The site is set back from the road and landscaped to keep traffic away.

Problems with the Royal site

There is a half finished new hospital, a hospital that will need demolishing and a cramped site in heavy traffic. It would be dangerous to have Liverpool babies born in such a situation.
Traffic fumes, and especially particulates, are very dangerous for babies. “Burning fossil fuels is now “the world’s most significant threat to children’s health”. Their life chances are compromised before they are born. Toxic particles from exhaust fumes pass through the lungs of pregnant women and accumulate in the placenta. The risk of premature birth, and low birth weight, this causes, is described in the British Medical Journal as “something approaching a public health catastrophe”. Guardian

The move to the Royal site is part of a larger project, not one that focuses on the needs of our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, and lovers nor for the precious babies. The move is part of this plan “The Campus can provide 100,000 square metres of space devoted to life sciences. This will provide development space for companies involved in research, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries. The Campus will capitalize on its location with a unique concentration of health, academic and industry life science assets; the famous Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (extensively supported by Bill Gates), the National Zoonoses Centre, Medical School, Dental School, centre for drug safety science, Wolfson Centre for Personalised Medicine, pharmaceutical and biomedical industry.”

The move is also part of the plan to close one of Liverpool’s Hospitals, which is well documented. Liverpool Women’s Hospital should stay where it is and be improved on site. Already £15 million is being spent on upgrading the neonatal provision. Remember Liverpool Women’s Hospital it is less than a mile away from the Liverpool  Royal Hospital site

All of the NHS is at risk. In this situation, we need to defend what we have “What we have we hold!” Other experiences of closures have not been good ones.

This is the only hospital fully devoted to the needs of women, in the whole of the UK. Women’s health needs much more research and more focussed research.