Born on April 12th, 1935 in Surrey, Wendy Savage is a distinguished gynaecologist and champion of women’s rights in childbirth and fertility. She was the first woman consultant to be appointed in Obstretrics and Gynaecology in London. In the early 1980s, she started a group called ‘Women in Gynaecology & Obstetrics,’ and is currently a member of the Socialist Health Association. Wendy recently retired from the GMC, having been an elected member for sixteen and a half years. She is the mother of four children.

Professor Savage qualified from Cambridge and the London Hospital Medical College in 1960. She worked in the USA, Nigeria and Kenya before obtaining her MRCOG in 1971. In 1973 she went to New Zealand as a specialist in Obstetrics Gynaecology Venereology and Family Planning. She later returned to the UK and became the Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Honorary Consultant at the London Hospital Medical College.

In 1985 Wendy was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists during suspension from practice on false charges of incompetence, which was the subject of a book she authored in 1986, A Savage Enquiry. She was reinstated in 1986 as Honorary Consultant at the Royal London Hospital. Wendy became an Honorary Visiting Professor at Middlesex University in November 1991, and in 2000 was presented with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science at University of Greenwich. She retired from the Medical School of St Bartholomews and the Royal London Hospital in 2000.

She brings to her practice the added value of empathy with the patient, and holds a firm belief in patient involvement in decisions such as the location of a delivery, whether natural delivery should be pursued in the case of a breech presentation, or whether a Caesarian section should be carried out only in the last resort.

Wendy has authored several books, including Caesarean Birth in Britain (Middlesex University Press 1993) with Colin Francome, Helen Churchill and Helen Lewison, which will be updated in 2005, and she has published papers on a number of topics, including induced abortion, sexually transmitted disease, childbirth, and caesarean section.