Parliament's health select committee has again delayed a decision on whether to progress a petition calling for the Lumsden Maternity Centre to be saved.
The committee's report on Clutha Southland MP Hamish Walker's 5000-signature petition calling for the centre to be saved has been eagerly awaited, but has also been delayed several times.
"I am bound by confidentiality on the deliberations which occurred in today's meeting, I'm hopeful a decision will be made next week,'' Mr Walker said.
"I have also asked the Health Select Committee to conduct an inquiry into the decision to downgrade the Lumsden Maternity Centre.''
The committee is evenly split between four National MPs and four Government MPs.
Two of the Government MPs considering this petition, Labour's Liz Craig and New Zealand First's Mark Patterson, are southerners and have been strongly lobbied to support the centre.
Lumsden Maternity Centre was altered to a "maternal and child hub'' as part of a region-wide review of maternity services carried out by the Southern District Health Board.
Since the hub was set up there have been a series of emergency births in the region, including a woman who gave birth in an ambulance on the side of the road while on her way to Invercargill.
The SDHB has two ongoing independent reviews related to the Lumsden Maternity Centre; a "mid-point implementation review'' of the overall regional maternity services strategy, and a review specifically on the four recent emergency births.
Last month interested parties held a meeting in Gore to discuss maternity services in Northern Southland, which will see an extra short-term on-call midwife employed at Lumsden.
A second petition calling for the closure of the centre to be reversed was started several weeks ago and is nearing 10,000 signatures.
