Coronavirus crisis hits pregnant women as clinics shut

Hundreds of thousands of pregnant women face a crisis as maternity and abortion services shut their doors because of the coronavirus outbreak.

One MP this weekend warned that pregnant women were being treated like “second-class citizens” with the closure of NHS services and a lack of government guidance for those in need of urgent care.

The NHS faces a severe shortage of midwives with the number of unstaffed positions doubling to one in five since the virus arrived in Britain. 

A fifth (22%) of senior midwives said their local maternity units had shut indefinitely because of staff self-isolating or being deployed elsewhere.

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Source: The Times, 29 March 2020