A recent inspection carried by the Health Information and Quality Authority at the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street Dublin that the hospital is currently overcrowded and has very poor hygiene.
The findings released in a HIQA report this afternoon show that the hospital is too small and hasn’t got enough delivery rooms, after 46 babies were squeezed into a unit designed for 36.
HIQA also said the severe overcrowding increased the risk of infection.
The damning report also discovered a number of poor hygiene issues which included unsafe injection practices, poor management of clinical waste and no local hand hygiene audits. Whilst cleaning resources were also found to relatively unchanged giving the demand increase.
However a follow-up inspection six weeks later found that the hospital did address some hygiene issues. Although HIQA were informed the hospital could not could do anything to address the overcrowding because of space restrictions and current demand levels.
Since the reports release, the hospital responded with a brief statement, with management saying: “At the heart of this story is an activity level that far exceeds the capacity of the building. “It is for this reason that for the past 20 years the hospital has sought relocation to a modern facility that is fit for purpose.”