This time it was midway between Portimão and Faro – again, because the Portimão maternity unit was closed.
The ambulance did its best to reach Faro hospital, but baby Estela had her own agenda, requiring another swift exit from a national motorway, so that volunteer firefighters could roll up their sleeves to deliver yet another Portuguese citizen, whose birth certificate now will pose that niggling problem: ‘location of birth’ (exit number … on the A22?)
This summer’s ‘drama’ of rotating maternity units (and babies born on highways) has seen the head of gynecology and obstetrics at one of the country’s largest maternity hospitals, Maternidade Alfredo da Costa, tender his resignation, blaming “high work overload”. As firefighters have said, authorities appear to want the nation’s new generation to be born in ambulances…
