Hospitals 'are ignoring advice on caesarean sections'

Advice drawn up by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says elective caesareans should not be performed until after 39 completed weeks so that the baby's lungs can develop fully. Otherwise, babies can suffer neonatal respiratory morbidity – serious breathing problems – which can prove fatal.
But a report out by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which represents the UK's 11,500 maternity doctors, reveals that the procedure is carried out before 39 weeks in 37% of such births in England and as many as 52.5% in some hospitals.

The RCOG's report says the overall proportion of elective C-sections performed before 39 completed weeks has fallen from 61% in 2000-01, but still stood at 30.3% (20,674 babies) in 2011-12.
Belinda Phipps, chief executive of the National Childbirth Trust, said: "NHS practice on this is damaging and isn't helpful to babies. Hospitals' preference for doing so many elective C-sections before 39 weeks leads to morbidity and mortality in babies, because the babies' lungs aren't properly developed and so they stand a higher chance of being resuscitated and also of ending up in neonatal intensive care."
2 May 2013 The Guardian