Here we go again....
A mother in northern New South Wales has been denied entry to Queensland for vital tests on a cyst on her four-month-old baby's brain, as border restrictions tighten.
Amy Gerang-Hall, who lives at Bangalow in the NSW north coast border region, had received a medical exemption to cross the border with her daughter, Davina, for a specialist MRI scan. However, Queensland Health has since told Ms Gerang-Hall it is treating all NSW patients as if they were from a hotspot.
"If we were to go there, we could only go into the Emergency Department and her neurologist would have to come and see her there, and everyone would be in PPE [Personal Protective Equipment]. "But she needs to have an MRI, which means she would have to go to the MRI department, and because that was in the hospital, we weren't allowed."
And from abit further down in the article:
Chris Ingall, a paediatrician in Lismore, NSW, said he was concerned border complications were placing infants' and children's lives at risk.Dr Ingall said it felt like déjà vu from a similar situation in 2020.
"Even last weekend we had four babies and children who required emergency care.
"Three of those four we had to send down to Newcastle because Queensland Health dictated that the parent would have to go into separate, self-funded hotel accommodation for two weeks of quarantine away from their child," he said. "So, the parents say, 'Look, I will just have to go south, even though I am moving away from my supports and family' and so forth. "We have babies who are breastfeeding, establishing breastfeeding, who have bowel obstructions, who have respiratory illness requiring ventilator support.
"There is this intractable Queensland Health approach, which I think is putting children's and babies' lives at risk."
It's been a year since Ballina couple Kimberley and Scott Brown lost one of their unborn twins. After suffering pregnancy complications,
Ms Brown was flown to Sydney for emergency surgery, instead of a much closer Queensland hospital due to the border closure.
Source