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9 Governance Rep ts NMH Annual Rep t | 2020 in a single room. These women were given, without charge, good medical attention, rest, a supply of food, and clean clothes for themselves and their children. This was a direct attempt to address the physical challenge imposed by childbirth on malnourished, anaemic but otherwise healthy mothers. The second objective was to use all the experience and knowledge accumulated by caring for these women for teaching the young Doctors and Midwives who were to look after other women in childbirth. The hospitals teaching function has been a vital part of its foundation from the beginning and as result, the standard of maternal care was at its highest and maternal mortality at its lowest and this still remains the case today. The National Maternity Hospital is now one of Europe's largest maternity hospitals with 200 beds. The hospital provides maternity, gynaecology, neonatology, fetal medicine, anaesthetics, pathology, radiology, maternal medicine, perinatal mental health, urogynaecology, National Neonatal Transfer Service and community midwifery services. The hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is recognised as a national referral centre for complicated pregnancies, premature babies and sick infants. Our gynaecology and colposcopy clinics treat almost 15,000 outpatients annually. One of the hospital's main sub- specialities is the treatment of gynaecological cancer; our colposcopy service is funded by the National Cancer Screening Service and is one of the largest units in Europe. We delivered 7,402 babies to 7,263 mothers and there were 1,240 admissions, of whom 117 were born weighing less than 1,500g, to our neonatal intensive care unit during the year. The NMH established a community midwifery service in 1998 including homebirth, domino birth and early transfer home programmes. This service covers Dublin and North Wicklow and continues to be the busiest community midwifery service in Ireland especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when more women preferred to continue their care in their own home. The NMH has built up a reputation for undergraduate and postgraduate training and holds international courses on the Active Management of Labour each year. The hospital also educates undergraduate and postgraduate midwives with an extensive professional development programme for midwives and nurses within the hospital. An annual higher diploma programme in Neonatal Nursing Studies is facilitated in conjunction with the two other Dublin maternity hospitals and the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI). The NMH is part of the Ireland East Hospital Group (IEHG) which comprises 11 hospitals in total. The IEHG is Ireland's largest hospital group serving 1.1 million people with University College Dublin (UCD) as its main academic partner. There are 3 other maternity units within the IEHG; Midland Regional Hospital Mullingar, St. Luke's General Hospital Kilkenny and Wexford General Hospital. There is significant inter-linking of services between the NMH and other hospitals including St. Vincent's University Hospital, Temple Street Children's University Hospital, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, and Mater University Hospital. As we embark on the main build of the new National Maternity Hospital at its proposed co-location with St Vincent's University Hospital on the Elm Park campus, we continue to seek critical capital investment in the current campus with most of the buildings nearly 90 years old. While the current campus will never be fit for purpose, we are continuously expanding necessary clinical services with additional appropriately sized and fitted infrastructure needed. Our new Labour and Birthing Unit (LBU) extension was completed affording five modern delivery rooms including a hydrotherapy pool for labouring patients. We will complete a refurbishment programme on the older part of the LBU by mid-2021 and this will also include a bereavement suite for couples experiencing a pregnancy loss. A new theatre development is ongoing with an expected completion date of mid-2021; this will give three functional theatres allowing a greater focus on benign gynaecology in the coming years. The first Declan Meagher Symposium took place over a weekend in early January at the Hospital with an exceptional panel of experts including Prof Mark Kilby from the UK, Dr Ron Wapner from the USA and Dr Simon Meagher from Australia. Organised by NMH staff, Dr Siobhan Corcoran, Consultant Obstetrician and …in the year that was, it was the 1,100 staff, all of whom worked tirelessly to provide safe and effective care to all our patients, that I have nothing but growing admiration and praise for...