Fears over separating
mother
and baby

Doctors said those needing urgent operations would have to be moved – while their mothers might have to stay in Yorkshire.

Medics also echoed fears from other doctors that the lives of sick infants could be put at risk if the closure of the Leeds General Infirmary surgery unit goes ahead.

Last year NHS heads decided the LGI unit should stop carrying out surgery.

A few months later the Government announced an independent review, while a legal case has also been brought by a Leeds campaign group.

Doctors from across Yorkshire have already signed a letter saying they fear babies could die needlessly and now more have spoken out.

Leeds consultant paediatric cardiologist Dr Elspeth Brown said: “It would be demonstrably worse for the patients who currently come to Leeds if they could not come here and had to go somewhere else.”

She said their biggest fear was babies with one particular heart defect, about half of whom are not diagnosed before birth.

“They have a condition that potentially after surgery will result in a normal quality and length of life.

“They are certainly being put at risk of never getting that opportunity, of dying unnecessarily.”

Dr Brown said there would be more inductions of labour or planned Caesarean sections for babies who were diagnosed before birth because plans would have to be made for them to be delivered in Newcastle.

A spokesman for the Safe and Sustainable review, which drew up the plans for the service to move, said the NHS Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme had agreed with its standards on care which include giving parents the choice of delivering the baby at the surgery centre if necessary and transferring the mother and baby if a procedure is needed.