NHS ‘Not Ready for Immigration’
| AR Articles on Britain |
|---|
| Whites as Kulaks (Jan. 2002) |
| Report from Britain (Sep. 2001) |
| Oldham Erupts (Jul. 2001) |
| No Representation (May 2001) |
| The Racial Transformation of Britain (Aug. 2000) |
| Black Crime in Britain (Apr. 1996) |
| Search AmRen.com for Britain |
| More news stories on Britain |
The NHS is spending £350m a year to provide maternity services for foreign-born mothers, £200m more than a decade ago, the BBC has found.
Immigration has raised the birth rate so fast that some units have closed, so that midwives could be moved to areas of urgent need.
A unit in Ascot, Berkshire, shut for two months in 2007 because staff had to be transferred to Slough.
The NHS says it is working to “build in” the extra capacity needed.
Other maternity units have turned expectant mothers away because they could not cope with unprecedented increases in the local birth rate.
When Labour came to power, the NHS spent around £1bn a year on maternity services, with one baby in eight delivered to a foreign-born mother.
Ten years on, spending has risen to £1.6bn, with almost one baby in four delivered to a mother born overseas.
While the number of babies born to British mothers has fallen by 44,000 a year since the mid-1990s, the figure for babies born to foreign mothers has risen by 64,000—a 77% increase which has pushed the overall birth-rate to its highest level for 26 years.
In central London, where six out of every 10 babies born has a foreign-born mother, senior consultants and health managers blame the lack of resources to deal with the pressures of migration for unacceptably poor standards.
Professor Philip Steer, editor of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, said: “The Department of Health has been taken by surprise. The demographic change, the sheer numbers, has in some areas increased very substantially without there being any forward planning really to allow for that.”
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, in 2006 there were 15,000 more Eastern European babies born here than a decade earlier.
‘Unprecedented increase’
The statistics go on to show that 11,000 more babies were born to a mother from the Indian sub-continent, while 8,000 extra babies had mothers born in Africa.
Heatherwood Hospital in Ascot closed its maternity unit for two months in the summer of 2007 because of an “unprecedented increase” in the local birth rate.
Midwives were moved to Wexham Park Hospital, closer to the pressure-point of Slough where in the last year staff have witnessed an extra 150 babies delivered to foreign-born mothers.
In a statement at the time, local health officials said they “reluctantly took the decision to temporarily close the delivery suite at Heatherwood Hospital for two months so we can ensure we offer mothers-to-be a safe, high quality service at Wexham Park Hospital.”
The knock-on effect was experienced in nearby Reading where the local maternity unit could not cope with the extra demand.
Tharlie Cooper was supposed to have been born in Reading, but when mother Lavina went into labour two weeks overdue she was told that, despite her being booked in, her local birthing unit was full.
Tharlie’s father Dean was furious. “Basically we got turned away and the reply I got on the phone was wherever you ended up is where you end up”, he said.
He drove his wife to Basingstoke in neighbouring Hampshire where doctors conducted an emergency caesarean.
Live Births by Country of Birth of MotherBirths by British-born mothers down 44,000
Births by all foreign-born mothers up 64,000
Births by mothers born in Eastern Europe up 15,000
Births by mothers born in Indian subcontinent up 11,000
Births by mothers born in Africa up 8,000
Source: ONS/BBC
Lavina, herself a migrant from South Africa, believes she and her baby could have died without prompt medical help.
The Royal Berkshire Hospital has apologised to the Cooper family.
In a statement the trust said: “It is a very difficult decision to close the unit and one which is not taken lightly.
“We are undertaking a strategic review to look at what sort of maternity services should be provided over the next 10 years, based on future population growth and birth rates.”
How to cope
Peterborough has seen a huge increase in births from Eastern Europeans. There were just three such babies in 2000, but almost 200 in 2006.
At the Thistlemoor Medical Centre, births among patients have increased 33% in just two years. GP Nalini Modha fears the authorities have not planned for the new arrivals.
“Hopefully somebody who is in authority is actually looking at the figures to try and work out how they’re going to cope with the influx” she said.
“If you’re going to provide responsible care for all the population—the indigenous as well as the newcomers—then we will have to stop and think about what we can and can’t afford.”
In parts of Greater London, seven out of 10 babies are now delivered to mothers born overseas.
The Strategic Health Authority argues that this partly explains why maternity services in the capital performed so poorly in last week’s Healthcare Commission report.
Births within migrant groups can often be more difficult, more dangerous and more expensive—with much higher rates of type 2 diabetes, tuberculosis and HIV among mothers who often turn up very late in their pregnancy.
London’s chief nurse, Trish Morris-Thompson, admitted that the NHS had not realised how immigration would affect maternity services.
“The timing of the impact is much quicker than we had anticipated”, she said.
“We’re working with our commissioners and our maternity providers now to ensure that we’re building in the capacity they need.”
   |
(Posted on February 1, 2008)
Comments
Go to any American hospital and see the Mexican and black babies(and mulattos), oh and the hmong babies and then search for a White baby if you can find one.
Posted by at 6:04 PM on February 1
With the oncoming “U.S. recession” (i.e. economic collapse), things are only going to take a turn for the worst in “Britannia”.
Soon, the productive members of Britain will not be able to support the excesses of the unproductive members of society - when that happens, it’s not going to be pretty.
Posted by Obscuratus at 6:50 PM on February 1
The Bank of England has been in the Christian USURY business since it’s foundings…perhaps it could open abortion clinics and sterilization clinics for the white Brits….In a short 2 generations the britains will have eliminated that anti universalists christian attitude….Maybe a Brown Queen and another Brown Archbishop would be just the thing to move the agenda along.
Posted by anchors aweigh at 7:19 PM on February 1
In the hospital where I work, (not a county hospital by the way)
about 85 percent of the babies born are of illegal hispanic mothers. The parents themselves pay absolutely nothing for the birth or pre and post natal care.
The federal medi-cal program reimburses the hospital $1,000 to $1,200 for each illegal hispanic birth.
And american parents and thier insurance companies pay $12,000 to $15,000 for pre natal care and birth.
Obviously the 15 percent of the parents are paying for the births of the 85 percent hispanics
Posted by medical billing clerk at 7:36 PM on February 1
When I had my baby I chose a smaller community hospital where I would not have a chance at having a foriegn doctor or a nursery full of Hispanic babies. The two days I was there all the babies born were white.
Posted by Spartan24 at 8:18 PM on February 1
I think that Britain is the canary in the coalmine for the US.
Posted by at 9:04 PM on February 1
I realize the British people are not entirely stupid. I know they cannot be. But the leadership of the Labour government seems to have been drinking leaded wine for decades.
What did they think would happen when they allowed millions of foreigners to enter and remain in the country? None of the new immigrants brought a house with him, so new housing would be required. (The UK is not a tropical paradise where you can sleep on the beach at night.) Almost none of the new arrivals were properly familiar with the building trades enough to build homes to British standards. One cannot build these new homes without land (or materials). While my impression of the country was mostly one of open fields and countryside, it seems they do not want sheep pastures and green belts of the cities turned into trailer parks or housing developments. So where in hell were these millions of immigrants supposed to live? Where would they go to school? How would they move around to work and shop? How would their health care needs be attended? How would they observe their religious convictions? How many would run afoul of the law and end up in jail? None of this should be any surprise to anyone but the fact there was no plan to accomodate so many immigrants leaves me with only one conclusion….someone in Whitehall must be bonkers.
Posted by Memphomaniac at 9:28 PM on February 1
Powell foresaw all of this.
Posted by at 10:24 PM on February 1
Of course, the situation is even worse than the BBC will dare suggest.
Many ‘British born’ mothers are in fact second or third generation Pakistanis, Indians or Afro-Carribeans.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 8:12 AM on February 2
The only reason we hear the complaints about too much of immigrant babies is, that these children are of Eastern European descent. No-one dared to say a word, when the majority of babies were born to Pakistani, India or Black immigrants…
Posted by EW at 8:47 AM on February 2
The only positive I can see in this is the East Europeans having the most babies.
Posted by watfordman at 9:11 AM on February 2
Voluntary repatriation might be easier if the heat was turned off and the health care scaled down. Things will have to get really miserable before whites can take back Britain from the contemporary invaders.
Posted by at 12:37 AM on February 3