Hospital bans cooing at babies 'to protect their human rights'

A HOSPITAL yesterday defended a ban on visitors cooing at other people's newborn babies for fear of trampling over the youngsters' human rights.

Some new mothers at Calderdale Royal Hospital, in Halifax, have been astonished by the new rules which stop people asking questions about their babies or looking at them in maternity wards.

But managers at the hospital said the drive was a necessary measure to prevent visitors gawping at newborns or questioning the mother.

The point has even been illustrated on one ward with a doll featuring the message: "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"

Debbie Lawson, the neo-natal manager at the hospital's Special Care Baby Unit, said that even babies had a right to privacy.

She said: "We know people have good intentions and most people cannot resist cooing over new babies, but we need to respect the child. Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me.

"We often get visitors wandering over to peer into cots but people sometimes touch or talk about the baby like they would if they were examining tins in a supermarket and that should not happen."

But the town's Labour MP Linda Riordan said the move was "bureaucracy gone mad". She said: "All mothers want people to admire their babies because all babies are beautiful. But in a case where a mother did not want to answer questions it should be up to that individual to say so."

A spokeswoman for Calder-dale and Huddersfield NHS Trust said she believed the advice was given in relation to the Special Care Baby Unit and was as much to do with reducing infection as it was with upholding "rights".

In a statement she said: "Staff held an advice session to highlight the need for respect and dignity for all patients and the potential risk of infection in vulnerable infants, to new mums and their families."

Belinda Phipps, the chief executive of the National Childbirth Trust, said: "I don't find myself with a postbag full of [letters from] women complaining that other people are looking at their babies.

"I really don't know why they're doing this, unless they have had specific complaints."