Boris calls for review of care for sick babies

Boris Johnson has written to Mr Johnson to demand that the NHS looks at whether there are enough neonatal intensive care beds in London.

It comes after the Standard revealed the children were among 700 patients transferred because of a shortage of intensive care beds.

A baby needing a special-care cot and a heart and lung bypass machine was sent 400 miles to a hospital in Glasgow and a boy born prematurely died after he was taken 120 miles in an ambulance to Bristol.

Others have been sent as far as Northampton, Brighton, Southampton, Cambridge, Hertfordshire and Kent in the past 12 months.

The Mayor said: "It is not acceptable for extremely sick babies and children to be transferred the across the country in search of an intensive-care cot."

His intervention - the first time he has clashed publicly with the Government - will make it difficult for the Health Secretary to ignore the problem.

He said: "NHS London should be asked urgently to investigate the adequacy of London's neonatal intensive care services. We need to know how many beds are actually available against how many the city as a whole should have.

"We also need to understand when and why beds nominally available are out of use because of a lack of trained staff or other resources.

"Specialist units must be properly spread across the city, but at the same time every maternity unit should have facilities to offer emergency care when premature or very sick babies are born."

The Mayor suggested that NHS London's recently formed paediatric clinical working group should investigate the extent of the problem and report back.

A recent review by health minister Lord Darzi found there should be one neonatal intensive care unit for every 15,000 to 25,000 births.

Many hospitals in the capital are running at an average of 90 per cent occupancy for intensive-care beds and the Emergency Bed Service has admitted it is struggling to cope with the demand. A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "There has been a 47 per cent increase in critical care beds since 2000."

The Mayor's move came as MPs revealed a massive shortage of nurses who care for premature and ill babies.

Hospitals across the country were struggling to meet demand for neonatal care, a committee of MPs said.

Every one of England's 178 neonatal units had to shut once a week on average during 2006-07, the report found.

It also showed that there was an average of three vacancies for nurses in every neonatal unit in the country and that 73 per cent of neonatal units experienced delays in transporting babies.

The cross-party group of MPs said a specialist task force should be set up to recruit more nurses. Conservative Edward Leigh, who chairs the committee, said: "The serious shortages of neonatal nurses must be addressed."