I have just attended the consultation meeting in Devizes for maternity services. In Australia (where I'm from) these units are as scarce as hen's teeth.

Occasionally when they do exist they are very small (they usually take only two families at a time) and are extemely busy. It's a fluke if your day of birth coincides with a vacancy.

It is the policy often in these small units that you must leave 48 hours after giving birth.

I imagine it's the nature of trying to fit into the workings of a very large, busy hospital.

So here you are in Devizes with a gold standard maternity unit and the proposal is to close it down.

It is in the confines of a supportive environment that breast feeding can be established not in a busy hospital, not in a unit where you are pushed out after 48 hours and not with a volunteer breast feeding counsellor over the phone. Think of the long-term health benefits to the community.

The consultation facilitator wasn't sure where the best place was for breast feeding to be established, that research had not yet been undertaken. I would have thought that would have been a crucial piece of research before such proposals had been put forward.

I propose more time, more research and improved promotion of the Devizes unit. The UK is progressive in the area of birthing (believe it or not) compared to Australia, but at this rate it is slipping fast.

Catherine Dwyer

Potterne