Couples let down as Britain lags behind in IVF league table
BRITAIN is lagging behind other major countries in offering IVF treatment – leaving many childless couples heartbroken.
Amid NHS ‘postcode lotteries’ and rationing, researchers have found that the health service also pays over the odds for fertility treatment.
International figures have found that the annual numbers of IVF ‘cycles’ offered in Britain are much lower than in many other developed nations.
In Spain for instance – a country with a population of 46million – there were 119,875 treatment cycles in 2015, the year for which the latest data is available.
This compares with around 65,000 in the UK.
Russia was second with 110,723 cycles, Germany with 96,512 and France with 93,918.
Experts said the figures show that compared with countries with similar population sizes, a lack of funding for IVF means treatment for infertile couples in the UK is not being offered.
This is despite Nice guidelines recommending that they do so. Recent figures show only one in ten clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England will fund IVF to the full extent suggested by Nice – three full cycles for women under 40.
Many CCGs are also trying to stop funding IVF altogether.
Aileen Feeney, of the Fertility Network UK, said: ‘In England it’s very much the classic postcode lottery. It’s so disappointing that IVF was invented in England and now you only get treated if you can afford it or you live in the right place.’ Around one in six couples suffer from infertility – defined as a failure to get pregnant after 12 months of trying to have a baby.
Experts also criticised some CCGs for paying nearly four times more than others for a single IVF cycle.
Geeta Nargund, an adviser to NHS England and Medical Director of CREATE fertility, said: ‘It’s not that we don’t have the money in the pot ... but different CCGs are paying different prices.’
She cited one CCG – Croydon, in south east London – which paid a ‘ ridiculously high amount’ of £8,000 or more for IVF cycles. It has since stopped funding IVF – contrary to Nice guidelines.
Dr Nargund added: ‘They could have been paying for four cycles of IVF for the same amount they were paying for one cycle of IVF.
‘Similarly, you see across the country several CCGs paying very high amounts per cycle. We should be offering IVF between £2,500 and £3,000 max, all-inclusive. It is achievable.’
Freedom of Information figures obtained last year revaled that of 208 CCGs in England, only 24 meet national guidelines and seven offer no treatment at all.
A PAINFUL and costly fertility treatment that involves scratching a woman’s womb should be scrapped, say researchers.
The ‘endometrial scratch’ is an ‘add- on’ IVF treatment costing around £350, but a study by the University of Auckland, New Zealand, found no evidence it raised pregnancy or live birth rates. The findings were revealed at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology’s conference in Barcelona.