So that’s all right then?

Not to quibble, but may we suggest to the Southern District Health Board there’s a difference between an assurance and a promise? The board has issued what it sees as an assurance to expectant mothers concerned about the proposed closure of Lumsden Maternity Centre.

A final decision is a tad overdue and Lisa Gestro, the board’s executive director strategy primary and community directorate (itself a title so stamina-taxing it scarcely suggests operational efficiency) says expectant mothers ‘‘should feel assured’’ that a safe and effective model of primary care will be in place to support them whatever decision is made.

Well, no, see, we disagree. No doubt that’s the intention, so the mothers should feel they have been issued a promise.

But an assurance is a declaration tending to inspire full confidence.

There’s also a nicely apt meaning: ‘‘protected against discontinuance or change’’. Pretty sure nobody’s feeling that. What we need to do is proportion our belief to the evidence.

One piece of which is the soothing statement from Health Minister David Clark that he has ‘‘heard the strongly held views by the Southland community about the centre’’.

So much so that the minister clearly isn’t much interested in hearing any more, in spite of the entreaties from the Lumsden Maternity directors to have an actual meeting with him.

The decision, if not necessarily the buck, rests with the health board as it firms up its thinking on a proposed new primary maternity system of care which, as things stand, would have Lumsden no longer offering birthing or postnatal inpatient care for mother and babies. Just antenatal and postnatal care

Gestro has acknowledged that a decision initially due in May has taken longer than had been hoped and ‘‘for some, this has created uncertainty’’.

Yes, there certainly is a certain uncertainty.

Apparently we’ve collectively shown ‘‘patience and understanding’’ which is perhaps inadvertently nice of us because we could have sworn that what we’re feeling is impatient and, when it comes to the justifications for a downgrade, uncomprehending.

No change to the configuration of services across the district is going to move pregnant women who come under Lumsden’s wide catchment any physically closer to Southland Hospital in Invercargill.

Nor will it change the number of cases of medical emergency, or weather-androad conditions that can problematically present themselves to an extent that has people not just rhetorically citing, but actually fearing, the potential for roadside births. Optimism that operational improvements will make the extra travelling distance no biggie, in terms of safety and distress, is not high in the community.

It’s possible that the health board will come up with a scheme that has people slapping their foreheads and saying of course, yes, we hadn’t thought of that.

Also possible that the detailed scrutiny of the proposal leads to a decision to retain Lumsden’s birthing and inpatient facilities after all.

But in the meantime the concern that financially pressured health boards are making cuts due to purely financial imperatives haven’t disappeared in a puff of reassurance. Far from it.