Caesarean births are being rationed to keep costs down. Hospitals are stopping some women having Caesarean births because they are so expensive.
The National Health Service plans for the first time, to prevent mothers from selecting or choosing to have a caesarean because they cost twice as much as a natural birth.
It is starting with the Greater Manchester health trusts who will only offer caesarean sections to women with specific medical conditions. The procedure has been placed on the same rationing list as infertility treatment, cosmetic surgery and acupuncture.
It is hoped that this will reduce or even stop the increase for choosing caesareans by women hoping to reduce the pain of childbirth or for cosmetic reasons.
However some obstetricians claim it will also penalise those who opt for caesareans on the grounds that they are safer for the mother. Dr Christoph Lees, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, said: “I strongly disagree with this prescriptive condition-setting. “Sometimes well-informed women, often older and very unlikely to have further children, do request caesarean sections and it is unreasonable to refuse if they are fully informed.”
About 23 per cent of deliveries in Britain are by caesarean section, and, of these, more than half are emergency operations. But a study in 2007 found a mother opting for a caesarean was four times more likely to die in childbirth than by choosing a natural birth.
The risk of requiring a hysterectomy after a caesarean section was four times higher than for a natural birth and twice as high for being admitted to intensive care and needing a hospital stay of more than seven days, a study for the British Medical Journal found.
A NHS spokesperson from Manchester said: “Where a caesarean section is likely to be the safer option for the mother or baby, it will be the mother’s choice how the baby is delivered.”
In 2007 the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence issued new guidelines to reduce the number of caesarean sections, saying women should be offered the choice of a home birth and should be encouraged to use birthing pools to reduce pain.
With public figures such as Victoria Beckham and Liz Hurley being criticised as “too posh to push”, and have booked themselves in for the surgical delivery rather than letting nature take its course and going through labour are setting a “fashionable choice” that young mums-to-be think is the best way to delivery their baby.
