Life is full of ups and downs and you can’t appreciate the sweet things in life without having tasted the bitter ones.

But, as George Harrison said, all things must pass, and the temporary closure of birth services in Andover has proved to be just that.

As the service was relaunched on Monday there must be a good many people breathing a sigh of relief.

How many times have we been told of temporary closures that have dragged on and on and eventually become permanent.

This was always a fear at the back of the mind when these services were suspended last November due to a shortage of midwives.

But this week the birth unit was fully operational again and resumed one of the services genuinely wanted and deserved by a town of this size.

However, during the closure of the birth services a ‘new way of working’ has been developed to make the ‘most effective use of midwives’.

This will require women in labour to contact the ABC before turning up, which is said to be to ensure a midwife is allocated and available.

We really must hope that’s the reason rather than an opportunity to redirect our mums-to-be to Winchester.

Our town is growing rapidly again and we need to see important services growing with it accordingly.

Things are moving ahead strongly on the education front and it will be good to see further enhancements to our local healthcare.

Whatever government we have next week will face the predicament of huge debts, not enough income and expanding social requirements.

Some areas need to be given top priority and health is one of them, for without that we have very little worth having.

Joe Scicluna, Editor.