NHS BANS OBESE PEOPLE FROM IVF
COUPLES who are too fat or too thin are being denied the chance to have IVF treatment on the NHS.
Cash- strapped trusts are imposing restrictions on childless people who fall outside “healthy” weight guidelines.
Among those clamping down is Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group, which says that from next month both the woman and the man must have body mass indexes of between 19 and 29.9 to be eligible.
Even those who get accepted will be offered only two cycles of IVF, not the three suggested by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
Wirral’s new criteria also include a rule that denies couples the chance for a family of their own if one partner already has a child from a previous relationship.
And couples must have been trying to conceive naturally for three years, despite NICE’s recommendation of only two.
Our investigations showed three commissioning groups in Cheshire have also been considering plans to introduce IVF funding restrictions based on patients’ BMI, as well as whether to cut the number of cycles to two or even one.
A study by campaigners Fertility Fairness found just 31 groups out of 209 offer the full three cycles, with 49 paying for two, 124 for only one and five none.
And our own inquiries have revealed that many more – from areas as far apart as Dorset, Surrey and East London to Staffordshire, Manchester and Lancashire – have plans to ration fertility services even further. Meanwhile services in Scotland are actually being extended.
Yesterday hundreds of people took to Twitter to protest at the postcode lottery in a day of action organised by the charity Fertility Network UK.
Network chief executive Susan Seenan said: “It is harsh and unethical to ration clinical treatment for fertility problems based on non-medical factors such as postcode or whether your partner has a child from a previous relationship. It has to stop.”
Public health minister Nicola Blackwood said it was unacceptable for any clinical commissioning group not to follow NICE guidelines.
She added: “Fertility problems can have a lasting impact on families.”