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| Airlift baby in stable condition | |
| (1 day later) | |
| A critically ill baby who had to be airlifted to hospital in Liverpool due to a lack of beds in Northern Ireland is now in a stable condition. | |
| Six-weeks-old Ben Marshall was transferred from the Ulster Hospital on Friday as there were no intensive care beds available for babies. | |
| Ben's mother, Michelle, said it had been a difficult time for the family. | |
| "It is very hard to see him like this as he had sailed through intensive care and didn't need ventilated," she said. | |
| "Now he just looks like a very ill wee baby. Although we know he is a fighter and he is doing well at the moment, it is very hard to believe that everything is going to work out." | |
| Doctor Kent Thorborn, who is treating Ben, said he was on a ventilator. | |
| "He is in a stable condition although he continues to need to have help for breathing," Dr Thorborn said. | |
| "He came into us initially with problems of forgetting to breathe." | |
| His parents have said intensive care services for children in Northern Ireland are not good enough. | His parents have said intensive care services for children in Northern Ireland are not good enough. |
| Ben was born nine weeks premature and spent a month in hospital before being allowed home, but he then developed a chest infection. | |
| His mother Michelle and her husband flew to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool on Saturday. | |
| His mother Michelle and her husband flew out on Saturday | His mother Michelle and her husband flew out on Saturday |
| Before travelling, she said: "We had a wee baby that died last year and you're just so worried that he would die on his own. I just wish we could be with him." | Before travelling, she said: "We had a wee baby that died last year and you're just so worried that he would die on his own. I just wish we could be with him." |
| Jennifer Kearney, a co-founder of the organisation, Life After Loss, which supports parents whose babies have died, said hospitals in Northern Ireland needed more resources to treat premature babies. | |
| In September 2005, Mrs Kearney's daughter, Hannah, died shortly after she was born at 23 weeks. | |
| "Had Hannah been born in Great Britain or over the border she would have been resuscitated and attempts would have been made to keep her alive," she said. | |
| Resources | |
| But Mrs Kearney said that the neo-natal centre was working to 136% capacity on the night Hannah was born and nothing could be done. | |
| "The government guidelines say that from 22 weeks a baby should be resuscitated if parents wish that to happen and from 23 weeks a baby should be assessed," she said. | |
| "That doesn't happen in Northern Ireland because there is no capacity. The service here works at a minimum of 100% all the time." | |
| Mrs Kearney said that the hospital staff had been tremendous and were in no way to blame, but this was about a shortfall in resources. | |
| In a statement, the Department of Health said: "While each case of a small baby requiring to be transferred is very traumatic, the actual numbers involved are relatively small. | |
| "In the last five years, only four newborn babies were transferred outside of Northern Ireland because there was no specialist cot available." | |
| An additional neo-natal intensive care cot was opened in Craigavon in 2006. | |
| An extra £800,000 has also been allocated for neo-natal paediatric intensive care services in 2007 - 2008. |