Professor Wendy Savage

Obstetrician, gynaecologist, women's rights campaigner, academic

Wendy Savage was born in Surrey in 1935. She read medicine at Girton College, Cambridge. Qualifying in 1960, she was the first woman consultant to be appointed in obstetrics and gynaecology at The London Hospital.

Savage is a long-standing campaigner for women’s rights in childbirth and fertility. Professor Savage has written and co-authored several books and many papers on women’s health and childbirth. As well as the UK, she has worked in the United States of America, Nigeria, Kenya, and New Zealand.

Savage is also a longtime campaigner for the right to die. She supports the view that a compassionate law should provide for people with terminal and incurable diseases and of right mind should be allowed assistance to end their lives if this is their fixed desire.

Savage was suspended from the London Hospital Medical College in the 1980s after allegations of incompetence but won her job back after a high profile inquiry found the charges groundless. She served for 16 years on the General Medical Council and is president of Keep Our NHS Public, a pressure group that opposes private contractors providing NHS care. She has been press officer at Doctors for a Woman’s Choice on Abortion since 1977 and is currently Public Governor for Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust.

In 2018 Savage was awarded the British Medical Journal Award for Outstanding Contribution to Health.