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Maternity units turn away British mums as immigrants' baby boom costs NHS £350m

Maternity wards are being forced to turn away expectant mothers because they cannot cope with soaring demand from immigrants.One hospital even had to shut its maternity ward for two months because its staff were needed elsewhere to deliver babies from foreign-born mothers.An investigation has found the cost of providing maternity services for immigrants has more than doubled in only a decade to £350million a year.

Migrant Mothers

Rising numbers of complex births from women born in foreign countries and a shortage of midwives are putting a strain on maternity services in Britain, medical professionals say.

Across Britain the birth rate has been rising steadily since 2001, with the babies of migrants making up two thirds of the 75,000 increase in births recorded by 2006. Many of the women who arrive from the Indian subcontinent, Africa and Eastern Europe have medical complications that need extra care.

The problem is most acute in London, where one in six babies are born to immigrant mothers and which saw a 21 percent jump in births last year.

Maggie Blott, a London-based consultant obstetrician, told reporters that immigrant births were often labour intensive.

"Women from ethnic minorities, particularly from socially deprived backgrounds, do have a higher rate of complications in pregnancy," said Blott, a spokeswoman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

"Most of the women in this country who are HIV positive come from sub-Saharan Africa, there are often other co-diseases like tuberculosis or malaria, which we see quite often in pregnancy in the UK now, all are very intensive in terms of looking after them and taking them through their pregnancy."

Translation is also a problem, even for mothers from relatively wealthy East European countries. "In my clinic we have 44 different languages," said Blott.

Karlene Davis, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM), said staff shortages were making the problem more acute.

"Some of these women require more of the midwives' time because of language problems, cultural issues and long-standing health problems leading to more complicated pregnancies," she said.

"Midwives want to give them the best possible care, as they do with all women, but the continuing shortage of midwives means this is becoming increasingly difficult." Since 2001, births in Britain have soared 14 percent, outpacing a smaller 4.5 percent rise in midwife numbers.

The RCM says the government needs to hire an additional 5,000 midwives in England alone.

A national survey of maternity units published by the government's health watchdog last week said services in London were the worst performing, partly because of the challenge of coping with the capital's wide mix of population.

NHS London, the capital's strategic health authority, said increased migration was one of a number of factors putting strain on maternity services in the capital.

But it also noted that many foreign workers were also employed in the National Health Service.

"While increasing numbers of people coming to the UK does put a pressure on services including health, it also contributes to the functioning of the service," said an NHS London spokesman. "The health service in London and elsewhere could not function without the migrant population."

Since the expansion of the European Union in 2004 many hundreds of thousands of East Europeans, far more than expected, have come to Britain seeking work.Many have decided to stay, putting pressure on local housing and schools as well as health services.

Babies from mothers from Eastern Europe have shown one of the biggest rises, climbing to nearly 11,000 in 2006 from just 800 in 1996.

Last year local authorities pleaded with the government for more cash to cope with the unexpected influx.

The Department of Health said improving maternity services in England was a national priority and that annual funding would be boosted by an extra 122 million pounds ($242.3 million).

The cost to the NHS of providing maternity services for foreign-born mothers has risen to more than £350 million a year, it has been reported.Record levels of immigration have pushed the cost up by £200 million in the past 10 years, according to analysis by the BBC.

And critics say the Department of Health has been "caught by surprise" by the rising birthrate, with some maternity wards forced to close their doors to expectant mothers.

Spending on maternity services has risen from £1 billion a year to £1.6 billion since Labour came to power.

And while a decade ago one baby in eight (12.8%) was delivered to a foreign-born mother, figures from the Office of National Statistics show that in 2006 there were 154,000 births to foreign-born women, making up about one in five (21.9%) of the total births in the UK.

The number of births to European-born mothers other than from the UK and Ireland increased by 87% between 2001 and 2006 to 27,000 - almost 4% of all UK births.

While the number of babies born to British mothers has fallen by 44,000 a year since the mid-nineties, the figure for babies born to foreign mothers has risen by 64,000, the BBC reported.This 77% increase has pushed the overall birthrate to its highest level for 26 years.

The BBC said Heatherwood Hospital in Ascot closed its maternity unit last summer because of an unprecedented increase in the local birth rate. Midwives were moved to Wexham Park Hospital, closer to Slough, where an extra 150 babies were reportedly delivered to foreign-born mothers in the past year.The knock-on effect was also experienced in nearby Reading, where the local maternity unit was forced to turn away expectant mothers because it was full. Peterborough has also seen an increase in births from Eastern Europeans - from three in 2000 to almost 200 in 2006, the BBC said.

Well no surprise there to hear that the birth rate of children born to foreign mothers has risen so much, I'll bet that as soon as foreign migrants arrive here the first thing they do is to start shagging like rabbits to have a "British" baby, and all the benifits that that entails.

The simple answer to this would be that if you haven't paid into the system, you cannot take out. No maternity benifits, return mothers to their own country's for the birth, and if they can support themselves and offspring they are welcome back.

Now then, does anyone want to buy a horse? Both parents can be seen (Alsations), but the pup was born in a stable, so it's a horse.

Bishop Dewsbury Immigration 2 3 Ireland Mosques Religion of peace Sharia uk Sharia2 Soldier Students Translations Turkey Writings on the wall