Appalled at First Minister’s Caithness to Inverness snub – Maternity statements were factually wrong
YOUR VIEWS
Services are too far away from us
As someone who regularly has to travel to Raigmore for consultations, tests and treatment, I am appalled but not surprised at the First Minister’s refusal to experience the journey from Wick to Inverness.
Last year I needed to visit A&E at Caithness General, where I received excellent care. However, the treatment I needed was not available locally, so an ambulance took me to Raigmore. I was in considerable discomfort and every pothole increased my pain.
The ambulance staff could not have been better, but they had no control over the state of the road nor the length of the journey. The staff at Raigmore were also efficient, friendly and helpful.
When two days later I was discharged, it was too late to travel back to Wick by either train or bus, and of course I didn’t have my car with me. My husband no longer drives. So if it hadn’t been for a friend of mine who is a first responder who drove from Wick to collect me and drive me home, I would have been left to wander the streets, searching for a hotel or guest house that, during the busy tourist season, had vacancies.
And as someone with mobility issues that make stairs difficult, it would need to be a hotel that had accessible rooms. I could well have ended up trying to keep warm in the railway station until the morning or paying a fortune for a taxi to bring me back home.
The distance between Wick and Inverness also meant that my husband was not able to visit me which, if I had needed to be in hospital longer, would have created additional stress.
I was lucky in knowing someone who was prepared to make the journey to collect me. I was also lucky that, if need be, I could afford a night at a hotel. These options would not have been available to everyone.
It is about time this breach of our human rights was sorted out. It is about time services now centralised at Inverness are returned to Caithness.
Kevin Crowe
Loch Street
Wick
Island maternity units are not the same
I nearly choked on my Groat reading Rebecca Machin’s extraordinary letter in the John O’Groat Journal of January 24, which lambasted MP Jamie Stone for having the cheek to continue his campaign for improvements to the A9’s far north section, parts of which are truly dangerous or poorly maintained.
She asserts that Orkney and Shetland have midwife-led maternity units, just like Caithness.
Wrong: the islands’ units are “consultant supported” to use the official language. Result: most mothers can give birth locally.
Caithness has about 95 per cent of babies born at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, with all the risks, stress, additional costs and inconvenience this causes.
Recently, the Scottish Human Rights Commission have rightly picked up on this scandal, but Edderton-based Ms Machin seems to have missed this entirely.
Caithness Health Action Team (CHAT) will be addressing a committee of the United Nations, meeting in Geneva next month, prior to their consideration of a CHAT report on precisely this matter.
Everyone can make an honest mistake, but her incorrect statement is quite offensive to people in Caithness and north Sutherland because it is factually wrong on a vital and rightly emotive issue.
Whilst there’s always a welcome over the Ord, a simple apology would be a good idea before Ms Machin makes her next trip north on a road her party have ignored for so long, one solitary hairpin bend excepted.
Matthew Reiss
Independent councillor for Thurso and Northwest Caithness
Highland Alliance
Human rights failings outline real problem
We were alarmed to read the recent letter from Rebecca Machin, in which she makes comment in relation to maternity care in Caithness.
We understand that Ms Machin, who apparently lives in Edderton, recently stood for election for a political party in the Lochaber area. It is surprising, therefore, that she has gone into print concerning matters in Caithness, whilst at the same time seeming to be unaware of the facts in relation to the maternity crisis affecting hundreds of women in our county.
We would respectfully suggest that she may wish to study the countless newspaper and TV reports on this subject; listen to the testimony of women who have had the courage to speak out; visits the CHAT Facebook page and website, and – above all – reads the recently published Scottish Human Rights Commission report which highlights, in stark detail, the human rights failings which have such a devastating effect upon women and babies in our area.
Further, we need to make very clear indeed that the reason why CHAT seeks the adoption of the “Orkney Model” for Caithness maternity services is because their provision is actually Consultant Supported, whereas in Caithness, in 2024, only 15 mothers were able to give birth at the CMU in Caithness General Hospital, with an incredible 215 being forced to make the dangerous and hugely stressful 100-mile-plus journey to Raigmore in all weather conditions, at all hours of the day and night, in pain and distress.
Caithness Health Action Team has campaigned for years in support of our mums and babies, and we will continue to do so. Indeed, the United Nations Committee on Cultural, Economic and Social Rights will shortly consider a submission from CHAT on this very subject, with our vice chair attending a briefing with them shortly.
CHAT is totally apolitical, and so are the unborn babies whose safety is put at risk. Ms Machin would be very welcome to visit Caithness and perhaps meet some of the women affected. She might well find that the mothers would explain the situation to her in clear and unequivocal detail.
Caithness Health Action Team
Wick
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