A PETITION calling for a review of the crisis at Whakatāne Hospital’s maternity department was presented to the parliamentary Health Committee this week.

On Wednesday morning, petition organiser Kat Walsh-Paton told the committee that the community was still severely impacted by the downgrade in services at the maternity department, and the situation needed to be resolved swiftly.

She pointed to examples of mothers being negatively impacted by the downgrade, including the stress of being transported by ambulance or helicopter in the middle of labour, mothers separated from families at a vulnerable time, and the experience of a family whose baby had died.

“As a community, we bear a weight of grief for all that these mothers have experienced,” Mrs Walsh-Paton told the committee.

Mrs Walsh-Paton also told the committee that the ongoing effects of the downgrade were becoming clearer in other areas of women’s health, giving the example of a woman waiting for a hysterectomy to treat a fibroid mass, who had been waiting for months for an appointment and would likely wait at least six months more for surgery.

“The concern is that the longer this goes on, how much longer it will take to claw back the extended waiting times for women needing gynaecological treatment.”

Mrs Walsh-Paton also raised the dire situation in Whakatāne’s emergency department, as reported in the Beacon last week, as an example of how things at the hospital seemed to be getting worse, not better, as time went on.

The committee seemed to receive the petition well, Mrs Walsh-Paton told the Beacon, with committee members Ingrid Leary and Hūhana Lyndon speaking up in support of the Eastern Bay community and calling for Health Minister Simeon Brown to visit the hospital and speak to staff and the community about the situation.

Health Committee chair Sam Uffindell acknowledged the concern Mrs Walsh-Paton had raised about the centralisation of health services and how the additional bureaucracy impacted negatively on recruitment and services in regional hospitals.

“We had over 5000 signatures on our petition, and for a small town that should go a long way to proving how unhappy the community is about the maternity downgrade,” Mrs Walsh-Paton told the Beacon.

“We desperately need an external review to find out what went wrong and how it can be prevented from happening again.

“The communication from Te Whatu Ora has been severely lacking all through this process and I think there is a lack of trust in the community that they would be able to accurately assess and report on the crisis themselves.

“I made it clear to the Health Committee that a review needs to take place, and it needs to be an external review for the community to have faith in its outcomes.”

Mr Uffindell told Mrs Walsh-Paton that recommendations would be made to the health minister’s office, and the community should expect to hear more in the future.