More than four in ten maternity units turn away women in labour

Maternity units are turning away women in labour because they have no room, figures show.

More than four in ten NHS hospitals refused to accept expectant mothers at least once last year.

The figures, from 103 of the 147 NHS trusts with maternity services, were obtained by the Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act.

They show that almost one in ten trusts closed more than ten times last year.

And the University of Leicester Hospitals Trust - one of the biggest NHS providers - closed 28 times.

In all, 43 trusts said they had closed their maternity unit, or had been forced to send women to another hospital, at least once in 2007 because they were full.

Lung patients ‘condemned to death as NHS withdraws their too expensive drugs’ 

Hundreds of patients with a rare lung disease will be sentenced to death by plans to stop doctors prescribing a range of drugs on the NHS, it was claimed last night.

Campaigners have condemned proposals by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to withdraw the drugs because they are too expensive.

The condition, pulmonary hypertension, affects an estimated 4,000 people in the UK.

Yet the plans by NICE, the Government’s drug rationing body, mean no life-extending therapies will be available to new patients because the cost of the most expensive exceeds its threshold of £30,000 per head.

NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she’s ‘too old’ for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery

A woman of 61 was refused a routine heart operation by a hard-up NHS trust for being too old.

Dorothy Simpson suffers from an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke. But health chiefs refused to allow the procedure which was recommended by her specialist.

The school secretary was stunned by the ruling.

“I can’t believe that at 61 I’m too old for this operation,” she said.

At least the grandmother story has a happy ending. All the media exposure force the governments hand. Now she’ll get the surgery.

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