Concerns are escalating over the widening rural health equality gap, which is seeing services squeezed and patients having to travel more than 100 mile-round trips to receive emergency care. Doctors and campaigners have said they fear roadside births will increase and claim rural cancer patients get less specialist care, with poorer survival, as services are centralised. They are calling on the Scottish Government to address what they have described as “inaction” from health boards tasked with reviewing how services are performing.
The calls come as a maternity unit in South West Scotland was mothballed again this week - meaning a 140-mile trip for expectant mothers continues. Galloway Community Hospital in Stranraer, where women with low-risk pregnancies could give birth, was shut in 2018 due to low staff numbers. It has meant over the past six years, families have had to make the 70-mile trip to Dumfries to have their babies delivered.
Mothers have spoken about how they have ended up giving birth on the side of the road since the unit was first closed, with one woman explaining she had her child in 2021 "in a lay-by on the Gatehouse bypass" after not getting to the main hospital in Dumfries, 50 miles from her home, in time. Former GP Dr Angela Armstrong, who worked in Galloway, said: “I’ve been horrified that over the years since it closed, women have been in touch saying they had to give birth on the side of the road. “I am afraid this will increase and it won’.
