‘Huge’ demand for IVF in Ontario
Ontario’s decision to become the lone province to fully fund in-vitro fertilization has proved wildly popular, with clinics taking just weeks to sign up this year’s limit of 5,000 patients — and creating an almost instant logjam.
The policy took effect in December, and fertility specialists say they are booking would-be parents into 2018.
Clinic caseloads have more than doubled in some instances, as the clientele grows increasingly diverse for a service that normally costs patients up to $10,000 a shot.
Even the couples who dropped off wait lists after visiting countries with the Zika virus did little to slow uptake on the controversial $50-million program, fertility doctors say.
“The number of people coming through has been huge,” said Dr. Carl Laskin, a founder of Toronto’s TRIO Fertility clinic. “It is incredibly busy.”
After ballooning costs and evidence of lax standards prompted Quebec to all but abandon its taxpayerfinanced IVF plan, Canada’s first, the rest of the country has been watching Ontario’s experiment closely.
The province has tried to stave off Quebec’s problems, capping the total number of cases at 5,000 a year, allowing each patient just one IVF treatment and limiting who is eligible.
Sandra Alsadavid, a Toronto lawyer, borrowed money to finance a treatment last year. It was unsuccessful, but she said she couldn’t afford another.
Despite the long waits, government funding “still means you have a chance and some hope,” said Alsadavid, a spokeswoman for the group Conceivable Dreams, which lobbied for coverage.
Most provinces still do not fully fund the service — embryos created by combining egg and sperm in a lab are inserted in the patient’s womb — though Quebec and Manitoba offer partial tax credits and New Brunswick a one-time grant.
Public funding is promoted partly as a way to curb the epidemic of multiple births stemming from fertility treatments. Whereas patients paying out of pocket often push for use of two or more embryos at a time, the Ontario program mandates that just a single embryo be “transferred.”
Dr. Art Leader, who heads the Ottawa Fertility Centre, said it took about four months for him to fill the 500 funded treatment spots he was allocated, despite the fact about 20 couples backed off the wait list after visiting a Zika-endemic country. Authorities recommend such couples wait months before getting pregnant in case they were infected by the virus.
Other clinics reached their cap within weeks, Leader said. He is worried about the mounting backlog, but believes pent-up demand at the program’s launch made this year particularly busy.