Meet the obstetrician who battled medical dogma and private hospitals to reduce Australian early-term births by 10%

When Professor John Newnham started a campaign to stop deliveries between 37 and 39 weeks without medical indication, his colleagues were concerned.

After all, pregnancies lasting 37 weeks were regarded as term, early inductions or caesarean sections were considered low risk and could be timed for convenience.

 “However, the idea that full term is 37 weeks was never based on any evidence,” Professor Newnham tells AusDoc.

“It was plucked out of the air in Finland in the late 1800s.”

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