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Women from overseas who give birth at Palmerston North Hospital are soon to be billed for their babies' care.
The Health Ministry has tightened rules governing free health care and babies of foreign mums are now ineligible.
The Government has also stopped granting automatic citizenship rights to all babies born in New Zealand, regardless of their parents' status.
The MidCentral District Health Board said it planned to allow a period of grace for women who are already here, more than six months pregnant and unable to travel home before their babies arrive, The Manawatu Standard reported.
The board said there have been seven babies born here in the past six months whose non-resident mothers had permits to stay in New Zealand that would expire in less than two years.
Those babies received free care but in future they would be charged, it said.
Board chief executive Murray Georgel said delivery costs varied - an uncomplicated delivery costs $2500, a complicated caesarean delivery is $9750, and the standard daily rate for care in the delivery suite or wards is $600 a day.
He said charges had previously been waived because parents could not afford them.
- NZPA
