Fuming!
Pregnant soap star rages at smokers who make her walk through toxic cloud ... outside a maternity unit
a PReGNaNT TV star has shamed smokers who light up outside the entrance to her maternity unit and called for the culprits to be fined.
Hollyoaks actress Rachel adedeji, 26, is expecting her first child at liverpool Women’s Hospital in three weeks but complains of having to breathe cigarette fumes every time she and husband Jason Finegan attend an appointment.
after her latest check-up, the former X Factor hopeful tweeted two pictures of smokers outside, who she fears are harming her unborn baby’s health.
One shows a woman puffing away in front of a child, near a sign urging mothers-to-be not to smoke, while the other features a woman apparently flicking ash on the floor. Miss adedeji wrote: ‘annoying when I go to @liverpool Womens for a check up and see people smoking at the entrance.
‘ People should respect the hospital grounds for what it is – a NON SMOkING GROuND. These people should be fined instantly! ’ Her fears mirror those of many health professionals who feel more should be done to stamp out smoking throughout NHS premises. The actress, who is currently on maternity leave from playing lisa loveday in the Channel 4 soap, said she took the drastic measure of shaming the smokers on social media because she felt not enough was being done.
She said: ‘I don’t judge anyone who smokes – I’ve got loads of relatives who smoke – but there’s a time and a place. We’re outside a hospital solely for pregnant women and their babies, we’re not outside a club. This isn’t me being a ranty non-smoker. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who feel the same way and the other day I witnessed a man having to waft smoke away from a car seat he’d brought to pick up his newborn.
‘There’s a time and place’
‘He shouldn’t have to worry about that on such a happy day for him.’ Despite it being only two minutes’ walk to the car park, Miss adedeji said: ‘They smoke right outside the entrance even though there are about seven signs warning them not to and pregnant women – and women with babies – are forced to walk through it just to get to their appointments.’
Miss adedeji claims she has even seen their grounds seemed pyjamas heavily ‘reluctant but pregnant smoking that to security do on women anything’. hospital staff in The hospital, which is where Wayne and Coleen Rooney’s three sons were born, says there are regular patrols by security to enforce its no-smoking policy but it doesn’t have power to fine those who flout the site’s rules.
Julie king, acting director of nursing and midwifery, said: ‘There is clear signage across the Trust site and at main entrance areas which ask people to respect the policy. However, we are not currently in a position to adopt any Health sites throughout, shelters stricter to england removed. be with made measure.’ wants the no- all remaining smoking hospital Public Mary Its head Black, of wrote digital in strategy, the British Dr Medical Journal that the NHS was unwittingly tolerating ‘ the last vestiges of tobacco acceptability’. She highlighted the sight of ‘patients in pyjamas dragging their IV fluid stands out into the winter street in front of a hospital to have a fag’ and staff in NHS uniforms smoking by the exits, concluding: ‘ Tolerating smoking on NHS premises is a form of collusion.’