Alice Springs Hospital

The hospital is located at 6 Gap Rd, The Gap NT 0870, and over 800 babies are born in the hospital’s maternity unit every year. You’ll receive your antenatal care from highly-experienced doctors and midwives during your pregnancy. They have Midwifery Group Practice caseload care which offers home births and antenatal home care for low-risk pregnancies. Also, if your choose MGP, you may choose water birth as one of your birthing options.

The hospital’s birthing suite has four birthing rooms, showers, toilets and baths. After giving birth, you can go home at least four hours after giving birth or move from the birthing suite to the maternity unit. Alice Springs Hospital has 16 beds in its maternity unit. These beds are for pregnant women or those who have recently given birth.

midwifery logo

Does Alice Springs Hospital have visiting private midwives?

UNKNOWN

Does Alice Springs Hospital have visiting GP Obstetricians?

UNKNOWN

Does the Alice Springs Hospital have visiting Obstetricians?

UNKNOWN

Hospital Facilities

Antenatal Beds

16

Birthing Rooms

4

Postnatal Beds

16

Special Care Nursery Beds

?

Neonatal Intensive Care Beds

?

Are there birth pools available for labour and birth?

Birth centres are designed to be a home away from home. A birth centre is a separate unit located away from the standard birth unit. Birth centres encompass a philosophy that pregnancy and birth are normal, natural events in the life of a woman and her family.

Does Alice Springs Hospital have a birth centre?

Birth Suite Tour Video

Coming soon

What support is available if I have difficulties breastfeeding my baby?

Baby-friendly accredited?

Alice Springs Hospital is accredited under the global Baby Friendly Health Initiative program. The hospital supports breastfeeding, and lactation specialist midwives are on-hand to ensure babies are feeding well before going home.

Alice Springs Hospital Statistics

Alice Springs Hospital

How a woman’s labour starts influences the chance interventions in labour. If labour starts spontaneously, there is less likelihood of interventions. In addition, if a woman has an induction of labour there is an increased chance of further interventions. In the above graph, spontaneous labour refers to labour that starts on its own. Furthermore, please note that Northern Territory’s statistics did not tell us if spontaneous labour is artificially sped up with medication or breaking of the bag of water. Therefore, this graph’s spontaneous labour includes labours sped up by medical intervention.

Induction of labour in PBB’s graph refers to one or more of the following interventions used to start labour:

  • Artificial rupture of membranes
  • Balloon catheter to open the cervix
  • Prostaglandins placed in the vagina
  • Synthetic oxytocin drug to start or speed up labour

No labour is when a woman has an elective (non-emergency) caesarean before labour starts.

There’s still no available hospital data on How Labour Started in 2000 and 2020. Please message us if you have or know the statistical source for the said years.

Alice Springs Hospital

Since 1985, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended countries keep the caesarean birth rate between 10–15% to ensure mortality rates are kept low for mothers and babies (WHO’s last statement update was April 2015). Since 1995 the cesarean birth rate has increased every year across Australia. In 2015, the Cesarean birth rate in Alice Springs Hospital almost doubled the WHO recommendation.

A small number of breech babies are born vaginally. Instrumental births include forceps birth and vacuum extraction. The caesarean birth rate includes both elective (planned) and emergency (unplanned) caesarean births.

Alice Springs Hospital

Please note that even though there is a dramatic increase in interventions in labour and caesarean birth – there is no change in the perinatal death rate.

PBB attained the data in the statistics from the Northern Territory Government.

Photo Gallery

PBB has created this page to help you be informed about local maternity services. We’d love for you to send us photos of the hospital to include on this page. Send photos to our webmaster.

Date page published 5th July 2022