Murray Bridge maternity ward looms as election battleground

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The maternity ward at Murray Bridge’s hospital needs an urgent upgrade to cope with a growing population, a state election candidate says.

Independent candidate Airlie Keen has launched a petition calling on the next state government to prioritise a “long overdue” expansion and refurbishment of the ward.

Its facilities were not up to the standard new parents expected in this day and age, she suggested.

Bathrooms were shared, rather than being ensuites; and patients sometimes needed to share rooms, too.

“Mothers and babies (deserve) modern facilities and the best care, delivered locally in our community,” she said.

With more and more young families moving to Murray Bridge in search of affordable housing and a river lifestyle, the hospital needed to keep up.

Real estate agent John DeMichele, a colleague of Ms Keen’s at the Murray Bridge council, agreed.

“We’ve got a housing boom happening now,” he said.

“The housing boom will lead to a baby boom.”

Ms Keen announced her petition in a local Facebook group, Murray Bridge Mums, last week; and collected about 100 signatures at the Murray Bridge Show over the weekend.

At the time of publication, she was in the process of creating an online version – Murray Bridge News will add a link to this story when one becomes available.

Upgrade is ‘desperately needed’, advisor says

Hospital advisory committee chair Greg O’Brien said a maternity ward upgrade was “desperately needed”.

More and more babies were already being born in Murray Bridge: more than 300 per year, or one nearly every day.

That didn’t account for all the local mums who chose to give birth in Adelaide, either, some motivated by the daggy facilities in their own region.

“With the shared bathrooms and stuff, it’s pretty ordinary,” he said.

“You’ve got women walking down hallways to go to toilets when they probably shouldn’t be.”

In fact, Murray Bridge’s doctors and hospital staff have been lobbying for an upgrade to the maternity ward almost since it was last upgraded in 2004.

It and the dialysis ward were expected to be the top two priorities in a master plan for the hospital which was prepared by SA Health last year.

Murray Bridge News asked SA Health for a copy of the finished master plan, but was told it would not be made available to the public.

SA Health also declined to provide a draft copy of a 10-year plan for clinical services across the wider Riverland Mallee Coorong region.

The draft was published for public consultation earlier this year, but is no longer publicly available.

A final version is due to be published later this year.

The need for improvements at health services elsewhere in the region was one reason a maternity ward upgrade had not yet gone ahead, health advisory committee member Fred Toogood said last year.

But politics was another, Ms Keen suggested at the time.

Just look at Mount Barker, another growing community, where the government was spending $366 million on a new hospital after lobbying by independent MP Dan Cregan.

We need better facilities, Liberal MP agrees

What is really the best way to get an upgrade, though: through the advocacy of an independent, or a member of one of the major parties?

Ms Keen’s opponent, Liberal MP Adrian Pederick, has also been pushing for improvements to the Murray Bridge hospital, and not just its un-useable helipad.

He mentioned the need for a “full upgrade” to the maternity ward in parliament just two weeks ago.

“(The) midwifery section ... is cramped, it is out of date and it needs a complete rebuild to bring it up to speed,” he said.

“We need good facilities, and we certainly need good facilities for people to work in.”

Without those facilities, it was hard to attract staff to work in the regions, he said – something that would become even more important if midwife-to-patient ratios being proposed by the state government became law.

The government’s plan is to have at least one midwife to every four patients in every public maternity ward in the state during the day, and one to six overnight.

The last major upgrade at the hospital, the $7 million emergency department which opened in 2020, was the result of a promise Mr Pederick and the Liberal Party took to the 2018 election.

Ms Keen and Mr Pederick are so far the only confirmed candidates for the electorate of Hammond ahead of the next state election, which will be held on March 21 next year.

The hospital issue is likely to be central to both of their campaigns, given their relationships to the relevant parties.

Ms Keen is a staffer in Mr Cregan’s office as well as being a Murray Bridge councillor, while Mr O’Brien works for Mr Pederick.

• Read more: Maternity, dialysis upgrades needed at Murray Bridge hospital