Home births defended

Press, 3 February 1983, Page 13

Home births defended

PA Wellington The Home Birth Association has challenged a Health Department report published this week that says the best and safest place for delivery for both mother and child is a maternity unit. Dr Deryn Cooper said in Auckland has • said that statistics showed that home births were safer than hospital births. The mortality rate of babies born at home was four per 1000 compared with about 14 per 1000 for hospital births, she said.

The report — “The Mother .'and Baby at Home: the Early ;Days" — says that the best and safest place for delivery

for both mother and baby is a properly equipped and staffed maternity unit. The association’s Wellington co-ordinator, Mrs Henriette Kemp, said that the report by the Board of Health’s maternity services committee was restrictive. If implemented it would “put the lid on” expansion of home births in New Zealand. Mrs Kemp said the recommendation. that the contracts of home birth midwives be reviewed every five years was discriminatory. “It’s very unfair to review a domiciliary midwife’s contract every five years when there is no similar assessment of hospital midwives.”

she said. A recommendation that domiciliary .midwives be contracted to hospital boards threatened their autonomy and the special nature of home births. “Our main concern is that hospital boards will start demanding that domiciliary midwives adopt certain specifications and requirements that will take away the essential nature of their kind of practice, which is natural child birth,” Mrs Kemp said. “Every New ' Zealand woman who wants a home birth has the right to one and we feel she should have the same opportunity to have a home birth, wherever she is."