A major central Queensland hospital expects to offer 24-hour maternity services by the end of this month after a temporary doctor signed a contract, but local women will still need to drive more than 100 kilometres to give birth.
Gladstone Hospital has been on maternity bypass since July, which has prevented most women in the city of 63,515 people from giving birth unless by elective caesarean, and they instead have to drive to Rockhampton when they go into labour.
Acting premier Steven Miles said a temporary doctor had signed a contract to start work on January 30, which will allow the hospital to offer maternity services around the clock from that date, but the bypass will remain until they can recruit another four permanent obstetricians.
"So on the 30th of January we will we hope to be able to return to we will be able to get to phase two of that planned return to full maternity services with the additional locum," he told reporters in Cairns on Thursday.
"We will continue to onboard the four obstetricians who we've recruited. Some of them are coming from overseas, that will take some time for us to get them here.
"We anticipate to be back to that full complement of 10 obstetricians around the middle of the year."
Gladstone mother Jemma Manwaring from the Save Gladstone Maternity Ward group has been calling on the government to commit funding for 600 births in Gladstone every year.
She said she couldn't find evidence of any obstetrician roles being advertised in Gladstone or Rockhampton and bristled that Health Minister Yvette D'Ath on Wednesday denied knowing local mothers wanted to meet her.
Ms Manwaring wrote to Ms D'Ath's office, which said her request would be up to the minister.
When asked if he still had confidence Ms D'Ath, Mr Miles said she was an "excellent health minister" in a complex and complicated portfolio.
"Often issues get boiled down to simple slogans on headlines by the opposition and by the media, but I know just how hard it is working every single day and I have absolute confidence in her," said Mr Miles, himself a former health minister.
"There's no harder job than being the health minister. I know that and she is working incredibly hard, she's incredibly passionate."
