ALMOST three quarters of the units caring for premature and sick babies refused new admissions in the past six months, such is the pressure on Britain’s neonatal services.

Research by Bliss, the premature baby charity, indicates a critical shortage of nursing staff in neonatal services. Nearly all of the 153 units surveyed in the report said that they had taken in more babies than they thought advisable, given staff numbers. A total of 72 per cent of units also reported having to close to new admissions at least once in the past six months.

Rob Williams, chief executive of Bliss, said that pressures were putting lives at risk, with mothers and babies being transferred across the country in search of neonatal cots. He said that one unit in Bristol had reported being unable to accept any new intakes for all but three days in the past month.

“Telephone calls made from Bristol can go to Oxford, London and then on to Glasgow before a cot is found,” Mr Williams said. “It is a disaster for care. You should be able to be looked after in your region.”

Many units had free cots but could not admit babies because they lacked nurses. It concluded that 2,500 more nurses were needed to bring the system up to an adequate standard, as set by the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, at a cost of £75 million per year. Better staffing could save 500 lives a year, Mr Williams said.

The charity said that Britain had some of the worst perinatal and infant mortality rates in Western Europe, and mortality rates for babies and infants had risen in 2003 for the first time in many years.

Neonatal intensive care services have come under pressure, with medical advances giving premature and underweight babies higher chances of survival. Britain has a high rate of premature births because of the high rate of teenage and middle-age pregnancies — where the risk is greater — and the use of IVF treatment.

The report “puts the spotlight on a health service that remains severely under-resourced even while parts of the NHS are seeing big improvements”, Mr Williams said. He suggested that neonatal care was a low priority for health trusts because it was not regulated by targets.

One woman who went into labour 14 weeks early spoke of having to make a 250-mile journey to a neonatal unit because of staff shortages locally.

Clare Knight, of Newhaven, East Sussex, was sent by ambulance to a Manchester hospital after going into labour at 25 weeks in November 2003. She said: “I thought we would be safe because we have one of the best hospitals on our doorstep.” But Ms Knight and her partner were turned away from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, after all seven neonatal cots were taken. She had heard that there were spare cots, but no staff to monitor them, she said. Six weeks later a cot became available in Brighton, where her son Harrison completed his rehabilitation.

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