‘It’s time to stop the retreat’ — Western Isles resilient over depopulation fears

O

ver her long career as a midwife in Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, Catherine Macdonald has been witness to a depressing social change.

Newly qualified in 1986, she took her first job in the maternity ward at Western Isles Hospital when it was delivering up to about 30 babies a month. In the whole of March this year, on the same ward, there were only two births.

Though the number was a “glitch”, to use Macdonald’s term, and rose again last month, it was part of a “stark” downward trend. The annual delivery rate of 130 is far below the 364 in her first year.

Other factors, such as contraception, have of course contributed, Macdonald said, but another obvious cause was a simple fact.