Today's GC BC media plus link to birth centre activism photo album

Two great articles from today's Gold Coast Bulletin:

Coast birth centre pushes on
Stephanie Bedo | July 19th, 2010

A single phone call was all it took to spark a rally at which hundreds of locals protested against the centre's sudden closure last week.

A telephone contact tree sprung into action on Thursday night and within hours women far and wide knew about the rally at Southport that would help save the Gold Coast Hospital's Birth Centre.

Deirdrie Cullen was a woman on a mission.

As founding member of Friends of the Birth Centre Gold Coast branch, she knew whom to call.

Through text messaging, email and shout-outs on social media, word spread fast 'be there at 11am Friday to show your support'.

The main players were Friends of the Birth Centre, the Maternity Coalition and Gold Coast Home Birth Group but they sparked many other organisations to join in.

Birth centre to remain open during review
Stephanie Bedo | July 19th, 2010

GOLD Coast Health District chief executive Dr Adrian Nowitzke has this afternoon announced the Gold Coast Birth Centre will remain open while an external review of maternity services is undertaken.

Dr Nowitzke said the review would look at the entire service and cover birthing, gynaecology and clinical and corporate governance of obstetricians and midwives.

He said the review committee would comprise interstate and independent members and would be represented through doctors, midwives and consumers.

``At the end of the day we've caused distress to people on the Coast,'' he said.

``We take that very seriously and we're very sorry for that.''
Dr Nowitzke said he wanted to make it clear he fully supported the midwifery model of care, as did the obstetricians.

He said midwifery was constantly changing and the hospital had to change with it, which was one of the reasons for the review.

Facebook photo album - Mothers & midwives working together - Birth Centres in Qld

Whether you are on Facebook or not, you can click on this link to see a photo album showing some of the history of many, many mothers and midwives in Qld supporting birth centres. The slides are from a power point presentation of over 250 slides by Maternity Coalition's Qld Branch called "Passion, Politics and Parents - Birth Reform in Queensland since 2001".