Healthcare workers have said people in the north coast area are facing a "worrying time" over the proposal to move maternity services from Coleraine's Causeway Hospital ahead of a public meeting.
The plan to move all births in the area to Antrim Area Hospital, almost 40 miles from Coleraine, follows a warning back in 2012 by the Health and Social Care Board that Cuseway's consultant-led maternity unit was unlikely to remain open.
A proposal on the move was accepted by the Northern Trust in March following a 14-week public consultation.
The trust has warned maternity services in north Antrim were "vulnerable and unsustainable", with the Causeway Hospital facing "workforce challenges and an absence of neonatal special care baby unit facilities".
The trust's medical director, Dr Dave Watkins, said the move to Antrim Area was the "only viable option at this point", with a proposal to build a new women and children's unit at the site.
Over 1,300 signatures to save maternity services in Coleraine have been gathered in a petition calling for an "immediate halt" to the planned move.
Unison's Causeway branch is holding a public meeting on May 2 at The Lodge Hotel in Coleraine as part of the ongoing campaign to save the services.
Northern Trust officials have been invited to attend.
Branch secretary Kim Hall said: "We are really concerned about the impact this will have on our community. It is a very worrying time for local people and for our members."
She said the Northern Trust "needs to listen to what we have to say and address the concerns the public have".
The union's regional secretary, Patricia McKeown, said they had previously warned that transferring services "will not solve any of the serious problems" within the trust that have resulted from a lack of investment and the "repeated failure to address the problems at hand".
