Private doctors criticised on births: "TENS of thousands of Australian women with low risk of birth complications are undergoing unnecessary medical interventions in private hospitals in a trend that a leading midwifery expert has described as ''horrifying''.
In a landmark study of nearly 700,000 women in NSW hospitals, those giving birth privately were found to have a 20 per cent lower chance of having their first child through normal vaginal delivery.
''The fact that these procedures which were initially life saving are now so commonplace and do not appear to be associated with improved [baby] death rates demands close review,'' found the study, to be published today in the British Medical Journal's open journal.
''The findings … suggest a two-tier system exists in Australia without any obvious benefit for women and babies and a level of medical overservicing which is difficult to defend.''
The leader of the study, Hannah Dahlen, said the women examined between 2000 and 2008 were aged 20 to 34, were not pre-term or overdue and carried babies of normal weight."
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