Airedale Hospital is to go further into the red so it can continue to deliver emergency care for expectant mums.

Health bosses at Airedale NHS Trust have sanctioned the appointment of another consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology to bolster its current team of four doctors.

The trust, based at the hospital at Steeton near Keighley, says that without the extra appointment it risks losing all of its consultants in the speciality.

That, trust chiefs say, would mean an end to its emergency childbirth team of obstetricians who carry out Caesarian deliveries and administer epidurals, which in turn would lead to the trust "significantly redesigning" its services.

The appointment has been deemed necessary as the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynae-cology stipulates that doctors provide 40 hours of labour ward cover a week. Airedale currently provides only 20 hours.

"They (the royal college) won't recognise junior training posts if trusts don't have 40 hours' cover," said medical director Dr Paul Godwin. "Effectively we wouldn't have any trainees in obstetrics and gynaecology so we couldn't provide the obstetrics service.

"Essentially we have to jack it up to 40 hours, which we are planning to do by a variety of measures."

Although existing consultants would ideally like to see the team increased to six, Dr Godwin said that five consultants should be enough to deliver the service.

Director of planning and marketing Doug Farrow said: "If we chose not to do this we would have a midwifery service without emergency obstetrics."

Finance director Janet Crouch said: "We have no choice about this. We shall just have to go further into debt."

She told the trust board the move would take a £100,000 chunk out of the trust's finances, which are currently £619,000 in the red.

She underlined the serious state of the trust's finances by telling the trust board that possible savings identified from the threatened closure of Bingley, Ilkley and Skipton hospitals have already been spent.

The trust has also said a chronic shortage of anaesthetists is threatening to curtail patient-care levels at the hospital.

It says its roster of 11 consultant anaesthetists is not enough to keep pace with demand across the hospital, particularly in emergency cases.

Bosses say the only solutions are to find extra funding for more staff and increased numbers of sessions or to cut the levels of service.

They argue that finding cash to improve the situation comes back to the issue of effective use of resources in the local healthcare economy, a reference to the future fate of Bingley, Skipton and Ilkley hospitals.

Director of human resources Roger Pollard said: "We are traditionally under-doctored in Aire-dale and within anaesthetics they feel a lot of the pressures."

Mr Pollard said the problem was compounded by the difficulty in recruiting new consultants in the speciality, particularly with competition from neighbouring trusts and the cost of employing locums.