Analysis: For Scotland�s largest health board it looks like another embarrassing climbdown.

FOR Scotland's largest health board it looks like another embarrassing climbdown.

This time last week NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was being told by Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon to apologise to families caught in the deadly Clostridium difficile outbreak at the Vale of Leven Hospital, in Dunbartonshire.

Today it appears it has been made to ditch plans to close the midwife-run labour units at both the Vale and Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock.

The board had agreed to push forward this strategy last June, arguing the units were under-used and their closure could potentially save £500,000 a year.

However, the SNP government, which had campaigned loudly against the centralisation of hospital services in opposition, were ready and immediately set up an independent scrutiny panel to investigate the scheme.

Back in December this panel, chaired by Professor Angus Mackay, suggested running the units for another three years to monitor their use.

Now it seems NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is set to agree a plan along these lines at its board meeting on Tuesday. This comes some eight months after Professor Mackay published his findings, but hot on the heels of the C Diff probe, which blamed uncertainties about the future of the hospital for the lack of investment and prompted Ms Sturgeon to demand the board focused on keeping services there for a change.

Yesterday, campaigners in both Dunbartonshire and Greenock said they were delighted to hear the birthing units would be kept.

Councillor Vivien Dance, an independent councillor for Argyll and Bute who has long fought for the Vale, said: "It is the first sign that we have seen that the pressure is on Glasgow to recognise the services that should be developed at the Vale and to make sure that they do everything possible to develop them."

Ciano Rebecchi, former Greenock provost, declared it a "big victory for common sense".

But there have been controversies since the Inverclyde Royal maternity service in particular lost its consultants, and all deliveries at the hospital became midwife-led.

Stillbirths and deaths among newborn infants appeared to rise sharply in the Greenock patch following the downgrading in 2003 and a review was ordered - although it found no evidence of sub-standard care.

Then, in 2005, Sheriff John Herald said expectant mothers in the area were receiving a "second-class service" at the end of a fatal accident inquiry into the death of infant Chloe McIver at the hospital.

Chloe was delivered with the umbilical cord wrapped around her shoulder and twice round her neck and survived for less than a day. Her parents Terry McIver and Jane Watt, from Port Glasgow, blamed the scaling down of the maternity unit for the tragedy.

The inquiry ruled her being born in a midwife-run service in no way contributed to her death, but the sheriff's comments grabbed headlines.

When it made its case for closure, the health board said it had expected up to 210 mothers a year to give birth at the Vale and up to 240 to use Inverclyde.

Instead, the numbers were in the seventies for 2006.

Nevertheless, more than 4000 people signed a petition calling for the Inverclyde unit to be retained.

Campaigners said the services had not been given a chance to establish themselves and were not promoted to pregnant women.

Now the demand for them can be tested - for the scale of this victory can be measured not by the decision NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde takes on Tuesday, but in the arrival of tiny feet.