Pregnant women in the Karratha region of Western Australia face having to travel hundreds of kilometres to give birth after local obstetric services in the town were downgraded last week.

The Rural Doctors Association of Western Australia (RDAWA) and Rural Doctors Association of Australia (RDAA) have warned that more pregnant women across rural Australia will end up in the same situation, unless more young doctors are trained in procedural skills such as obstetrics and enticed to rural areas, alongside additional nurses and midwives.

“Last Monday and Tuesday, Karratha’s hospital was unable to provide a safe obstetric service as there was no longer a doctor available to do Caesarean sections” RDAWA President, Dr Rob Whitehead, said. “In an unprecedented move, the hospital advised near-term women to relocate immediately to Port Hedland or Perth.

“Obstetric services in northwest WA are facing increasing pressure due to a critical lack of midwives and doctors trained in the advanced skills required to provide complex obstetric care. We have only one specialist obstetrician covering 500,000 square kilometres in the Pilbara. We desperately need to train, recruit, and better support GPs with advanced obstetric skills to provide lifesaving care where it is needed on-the-ground in rural Australia.

“Transferring a woman in labour from a remote centre such as Karratha to Port Hedland (over 200 kilometres away) or to Perth (over 1500 kilometres away) represents an unacceptable risk to mother and child.

“Over 300 babies are delivered each year in Karratha. Of these, almost one third of mothers will require a Caesarean section to achieve a safe delivery.

“Although the immediate crisis has been alleviated in Karratha by some short-term locum placements, the local obstetric service faces an uncertain future after the most recent locum finished his placement yesterday. And even if we get another locum, there will be no elective Caesarean sections or inductions available in Karratha for the foreseeable future due to a lack of nurses and trained midwives.

“The WA Government, through the WA Country Health Service, must implement urgent measures to ensure that women in the Pilbara are guaranteed ongoing access to services essential to safe care during pregnancy and childbirth. This includes urgently recruiting additional Caesar-skilled doctors, as well as nurses and midwives, to ensure Karratha’s vital obstetric service can continue.”

RDAA President, Dr Peter Rischbieth, said the situation in Karratha highlighted the urgent need for the state and federal governments to work co-operatively to solve the rural obstetrics crisis.

“We need a cohesive national strategy to train, recruit and retain more doctors with advanced procedural skills in rural areas, and to get more nurses and midwives with advanced training working alongside them” he said. “Rural women have a right to high quality health services—including an adequate number of doctors and other health professionals—to provide safe care for them and their babies when they are giving birth.”

RDAWA Vice President, Dr Phil Reid, said: “Australia’s governments must ensure that obstetric and other advanced healthcare services are maintained in rural towns. And our health services must ensure they can anticipate a lack of local Caesarean section availability well in advance, so they can take immediate action to maintain seamless service delivery. Upskilling more GP obstetricians, and building multidisciplinary rural obstetric care teams of doctors, nurses and midwives, is the way forward. Let’s get on with this in WA."