HEALTH FORUM

A West Yorkshire hospital has banned visitors from cooing at new-born
babies over fears their human rights are being breached and to reduce
infection.

A statement from Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax said staff had
held an advice session to highlight the need for respect and dignity
for patients.

On one ward there is a doll featuring the message: What makes you
think I want to be looked at?

But Labour MP Linda Riordan said the measures were bureaucracy gone
mad.

She said: All mothers want people to admire their babies because all
babies are beautiful.

But in a case where a mother did not want to answer questions it
should be up to that individual to say so.

Some new mothers have already said they are astonished by the rules
which stop people asking questions about their babies or looking at
them in maternity wards.

Debbie Lawson, neo-natal manager at the hospitals special care baby
unit, said: Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are
little people with the same rights as you or me.

Infection control

We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people
sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were
examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen.

A spokeswoman for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust said the
advice was as much to do with reducing infection as it was upholding
rights.

In a statement she said: Staff were wishing to highlight issues of
potential confidentiality, especially for young babies and their
parents in what can be emotional times.

Infection control was also a key part of the message as the unit
deals with very small babies with very vulnerable immune systems.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/west yorkshire/4284522.stm

Greg Davie wrote:

fast forward sixteen years and some brief will be defending his
clients appaling record by claiming he was cooed at as a baby...

john...@hotmail.com wrote:

*grin* Had the hospital said it was for infection control reasons, they
might have had a point. But to protect the infants human rights????

Ian

Greg Davie wrote:

[paste snipped]


Ill bet those responsible for this decision are still in overpaid
post.

Mel Rowing

In uk.legal Greg Davie wrote:

She is obviously a very stupid person. How does she imagine babies
actually develop normally except by being able to see human faces
and gradually attempt to imitate them and the reactions that they
see on those faces.

Axel

Mel Rowing wrote in message
news:1127809756.568155.210030@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

and doubtless vote NuLabcur.

In message , Greg Davie
writes

This isnt new though - when DS1 was born prematurely, the neo-natal
unit had strict rules about visitors looking at / asking about other
peoples children, and I was VERY glad they did. There was enough heart
ache in me knowing all the problems that DS was facing, but to have to
keep explaining them to nosey visitors would have been unbearable. TBH
I assume this is talking about people staring at babies other than the
one they are visiting, and if so why is it so wrong to ask the visitors
not to hassle mothers that have just given birth? Most women arent in
the maternity wards that long anymore, unless there is a problem for
either them or the child, so the all round healthy ones are likely
to be just post-partum, and the ones that have had a rest are likely to
be not that happy.

JMO

--
Jenn
UK
Mum to L - 01/99, M 04/02 and J 05/04

In message , Ian
Bailey writes

Quite. This sort of thing really pisses me off, because it trivialises
genuine human rights issues. It is utter bollocks, and whoever dreamt it
up should be fired on the spot for incompetence.
--
Richard Miller