Vanessa Shand, who drives up the dual carriageway every day from her home in Perth, to get to work at Ninewells, is extremely concerned about what she believes is a totally unwarranted attack on the services at Ninewells that will instil groundless fears in pregnant women.

She spoke out after comments by Kate Gillanders, a vocal campaigner on behalf of retaining services at Perth Royal Infirmary.

Within hours of giving birth to her fourth child in PRI, Mrs Gillanders claimed she could not have received the same level of service at Ninewells, emphasising the “intimacy” of the experience at PRI.

“My big concern is the way she has put over, in a front page article, that she feels she could only get that type of delivery in Perth, when we actually provide that here in Ninewells,” said Mrs Shand, a senior sister in midwifery at the Dundee hospital.

“I am really sad that Kate feels she has got to take this tack of denigrating what goes on here in Ninewells when she has not had a baby here.”

Mrs Shand said pregnant women were offered an intimate birth experience at Ninewells.

The hospital’s delivery suite had individual rooms, all with dimmed lights and facilities for women to play their own music.

The facilities were “exactly the same” as those at PRI, but on a larger scale.

For many years, long before the region’s acute services review and proposals for change, women from Perth always came to Dundee when their babies were extremely small and required the specialist services available at the larger hospital. The modern service is no different in that respect.

“Any baby who was identified as needing intensive care always came to Dundee,” said Mrs Shand.

But since the idea of a midwife-led maternity unit in Perth was first raised, there has been a massive backlash from people in Perth and Perthshire keen to retain the services of the consultant led unit at PRI.

Mrs Shand is concerned that emotionally-charged comments are having a detrimental effect on women who may need to travel to Dundee to have their babies safely. “I think Kate is scaremongering,” said Mrs Shand.

“The midwives here are caring, considerate and dedicated. They strive for natural childbirth for all women, but they support those women who don’t choose that method, or are unable to choose that method of delivery.

“Because Kate had a two-and-a-half-hour labour, she would have had the same midwife throughout here in Ninewells. That would not have been any different (from her experience at PRI).”

In the case of high-risk births, Mrs Shand said the team at Ninewells, in co-operation with the women, tried to transfer mothers and babies back to PRI as soon as possible.

“As far as I am concerned, the midwives here in Ninewells provide care that is second to none. I am not saying we are better than anybody else, but we are second to none and I don’t want the women of Tayside to be frightened or scared of coming here because the welcome and care they will receive is second to none.”

Finally, Mrs Shand pointed out she had never been stopped from getting to work because of winter weather. Campaigners have previously pointed out the difficulties of negotiating the extra distance up the dual carriageway to Dundee in poor conditions.

“I probably get to work more easily than the midwives who live in Dundee,” said Mrs Shand. “They keep the main roads clear.”