Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:30 pm on 29 March 2017.
Diolch, Llywydd. My colleague Steffan Lewis yesterday asked the First Minister to reopen a specialist mother and baby perinatal unit, following the closure of Wales’s last unit in 2013. The First Minister said that, in the past few years, fewer than five new mothers were referred to an in-patient unit in Wales. I’ve no idea what he was talking about—we haven’t got a mother and baby unit in Wales. Where he got the figure five from, I’ve no idea either. But his argument was that we don’t have the demand.
Between January 2015 and January 2017, we have identified 21 women in the Cardiff area alone who would have been admitted to a unit had that still been open. Of those, six were referred to an out-of-area unit, but only two actually went, because the others did not want to be separated from their families. Do you accept that the demand is higher than the First Minister suggested yesterday?