Local residents are teaming with unions and healthcare advocates in putting pressure on North Central Bronx Hospital to re-open its popular labor and delivery department.

A couple of weeks ago, organizing under the name Community Power: North Bronx, more than a dozen residents from the area around North Central Bronx Hospital held a protest march outside the hospital’s entrance on Kossuth Avenue.

They were joined by members of DC 37, the New York State Nurses Association, Lawyers for the Public Interest, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and the Commission on the Public’s Health System.

Their singular goal: push hospital officials to re-open the labor and delivery units at NCB. Officials have only said that the services have been suspended, which opponents of the changes say is an opening for a reversal.

The fledgling local group began organizing in Williamsbridge Oval Park around the closure of NCB’s labor and delivery unit and is intent on becoming an activist voice in the community, said member Eileen Markey.

At least one midwife, who was transferred from North Central to Jacobi Hospital along with the rest of her department, was on hand to participate. She said morale has been low since NCB made the abrupt decision to consolidate its labor and delivery services at Jacobi.

While declining to give her name because she feared retribution, the midwife said the group’s coalescing in opposition to the consolidation of services at Jacobi might work, because now it’s “not just disgruntled workers. They don’t care about us.”

NCB officials have said the consolidation was necessary to cut costs. A spokesperson for the hospital declined to answer specific questions.

An opposition vigil, led by Community Power: North Bronx was scheduled for Wednesday night, Oct. 2.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the Oct. 3-16 print edition of the Norwood News.