Call for GPs to help amid baby boom

GPs must be trained to deliver babies because of a critical shortage of obstetricians who are struggling to cope with WA's baby boom, doctors have warned.

Despite a surging population and a bumper year that resulted in 32,494 babies being born last year, WA has the worst ratio of obstetricians and gynaecologists per head of population with only 122 for 2.36 million people.

It comes as WA faces a population explosion, expected to reach 3.06 million by 2026 - about 400,000 higher than estimated in 2006.

One of Perth's biggest hospitals, Joondalup Health Campus, is seeing unprecedented demand for antenatal clinic appointments after a 27 per cent rise in private ward deliveries and a 17 per cent increase in public ward deliveries in the second half of last year.

In January, it had a record 250 births - 16 per cent higher than the same time last year.

At King Edward Memorial Hospital, mostly a specialist hospital for complicated pregnancies, deliveries are up 10 per cent in the first two months of this year, with 1043 births compared with 947 at the same time last year.

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists vice-president Louise Farrell said demand was "huge" and the State Government needed to offer incentives to attract more staff to maternity services, particularly in the expanding northern and southern corridors.

"We need to look at ways of dealing with that, including making sure we have obstetric services where they're needed, like Joondalup," Dr Farrell said.

"We have the highest ratio of women-to-obstetricians in the country and also a big area to cover, so we need to upskill more GPs to provide some of that care."

Australian Medical Association WA president Dave Mountain said it was important to have more GP-obstetricians to manage low-risk pregnancies but it did not lessen the demand for specialist care.

He said obesity, diabetes and older mothers would continue to drive up the number of higher-risk pregnancies. "It's likely we'll have more complicated cases with the need for intervention, so the workforce, including specialists, is definitely going to have to expand significantly," Dr Mountain said.

Obstetrician and AMA vice-president Michael Gannon said the shortage was compounded by many obstetricians being women who had their own families and wanted to work part-time.

Demographer Bernard Salt said WA's resources boom had produced a primal response to "go out and multiply", with many families going back for baby number three and four.