THE state’s most fragile newborns are being sent interstate because Victoria’s neonatal intensive care units are stretched to breaking point.

Over the past week, Victoria’s 72 neonatal intensive care cots have been full, forcing dangerously premature babies or mothers with high-risk pregnancies to be flown interstate for life-preserving care.

Four acute babies or mothers with high-risk pregnancies have been flown to Canberra or Adelaide in the past fortnight.
At the same time, the Brumby Government celebrated the opening of the new $250 million Royal Women’s Hospital, which has been widely criticised for being too small to cope with a rising birthrate.

The Department of Human Services yesterday revealed that 12 newborns from regional areas, who would normally be treated at Melbourne hospitals, had been flown interstate for care in the past year.

This was up from just three in 2005-06 and nine in 2006-07.

The new Royal Women’s is equipped with 18 neonatal intensive care cots but can accommodate an extra two when stretched — the same as the hospital it replaced.

Newborn Emergency Transport Service state medical director Dr Michael Stewart said the system was under pressure from a surge in demand.

He said no babies had been harmed by the recent journeys.

“It is obviously not ideal to have to do this, but we are looking at what is the safest and most effective for the whole system at the time as well as being very cognisant of the individual baby and their families,” he said.

“I don’t think in the ideal world it is good to move an adult, a child or a baby from one hospital to another or out of the state if they need intensive care, but the reality is that is occasionally what we need to do.

“These peaks can last for a few days to a week or so, sometimes they last several months, but the tip of the peak we hope just lasts for several days because that does get very difficult to manage.”

The new $1 billion Royal Children’s Hospital will have an increase in its number of neonatal intensive care cots when it is completed in 2011.

Monash Medical Centre and Mercy Hospital for Women are the only other Victorian hospitals with units to sustain the dangerously premature newborns who need help to breath.

Dr Stewart said the state usually coped with less than 60 babies needing intensive care at any one time and “cot-block” had improved since 2000 when there were just 48 Victorian neonatal intensive care unit cots.

But Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists president Christine Tippett said there were simply not enough neonatal intensive care cots to meet demand.

“The four units are constantly running at or near capacity and the pressure on staff and equipment is at an unsustainable level,” she said.

Department of Human Services spokesman Steve Pivetta said babies in border areas were often closer to interstate hospitals and denied a lack of resources was to blame.

Editor – Grant McArthur
Article from Herald Sun

MILICA shouldn’t be here yet. This five-week-old baby, born three months’ premature, should still be a kick in her mother’s belly and a half-decided name. Now her home is a plastic tub, a mess of monitor wires and a tube pressing air into her lungs.

Next Saturday she’ll have her second unexpected change of address, as one of the first babies to move from the old to the new Royal Women’s Hospital, which was officially opened yesterday. A team of specially trained paramedics will carefully lift her from her cot in the crowded intensive-care nursery of the dark and ageing Carlton premises.

Strapped to mobile life-support machines, the tiny 862-gram package (already 300 grams heavier than when she was born) will move three blocks down the road to the $250 million Parkville building, with its bright, spacious wards. There she will continue her fight towards independence.

Compared with Milica’s story so far, the move will be a walk in the park. Twelve years ago her mother, Fiona Nika, 36, of Hillside, was told she could not have children. She and husband Branko accepted it. “We raised dogs and so forth.”

Then, two weeks before Christmas, they were told they were expecting a child. That shock was enough. But five months later Mrs Nika woke in pain and the local hospital diagnosed severe pre-eclampsia.

Within hours she was at the Royal Women’s, being told her 26-week baby would have to enter the world in order to save both their lives. Doctors kept Milica inside Mrs Nika as long as possible: when a baby is this premature, every extra day in the womb adds to their chance of survival. But Mrs Nika’s condition worsened and Milica started to struggle. “It was touch and go for both of us,” Mrs Nika says.

Her husband remembers Milica being taken out. “There was no noise at all,” he says. She wasn’t breathing. Doctors forced air into her throat. For a moment, she started breathing and gave a tiny squeal. “That was the first time I thought she was going to make it.”

Groggy from the caesarean, Mrs Nika caught a glimpse of her daughter as she rushed past to intensive care. “I just saw this shape — ‘Oh, she looks pretty’ — then they took her.”

Mrs Nika says next weekend’s move will be one of the longest days of her life, as she waits to hear that her “little miracle girl” is safely at Parkville. “It will be the longest time I haven’t seen her … Come 6 o’clock (when parents are allowed into the new hospital) I’ll be kicking the door down.”

Article from the age