Cairns Base Hospital

Cairns Base Hospital is located at 165 Esplanade, Cairns North QLD 4870. With their maternity services, you can choose different care options during your pregnancy. They offer childbirth and parenting classes for first-time parents and refresher classes for parents who have had a baby before. Cairns birth centre is separate from the main birth suite. Women must be with the MGP to use the birth centre.

At Cairns Hospital, women with high-risk or complicated pregnancies can access their treatments and support services. Before you have your baby, your midwife will be your primary carer. When you are in labour, you may contact your midwife or the birth suite so they can inform you what to do next. After you go home, your MGP midwife will call and arrange to visit you and your baby at home.

midwifery logo

Does Cairns Base Hospital have visiting private midwives?

NO

Does Cairns Base Hospital have visiting GP Obstetricians?

UNKNOWN

Does the Cairns Base Hospital have visiting Obstetricians?

UNKNOWN

Hospital Facilities

Antenatal Beds

?

Birthing Rooms

9

Postnatal Beds

?

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 Cairns Base 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?

Cairns Base 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.

Cairns Base Hospital Statistics

PBB is unable to find separate statistics for individual hospitals in Queensland. The following statistics are from Queensland as a whole.

Queensland Hospital Statistics

How a woman’s labour starts influences the chance interventions in labour. If labour starts spontaneously, there is less likelihood of interventions. 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. Please note that QLD statistics did not tell us if spontaneous labour is artificially sped up with medication or breaking of the bag of water. So spontaneous labour in this graph includes labours that are 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.

Queensland Hospital Statistics

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 2019 the Cesarean birth rate in the QLD was more than double 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.

Queensland Hospital Statistics

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 Queensland 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.

Page updated 4th July 2022