HFEA acts to reduce multiple births

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has finally come up with a long-awaited policy to reduce multiple births after IVF, and is calling for a professionally-led national strategy to cut the twin rate to 10% over a period of three years.

Patients are often unaware of the real risks they are taking with their children's health when it comes to multiple births, and fertility clinics have not always acted in their best interests on this front. The biggest danger to the health of children conceived by IVF in the UK is multiple birth, and the HFEA estimates that around 126 IVF babies die every year purely as a result of being multiples. For many others, being a twin or triplet may mean being born prematurely and suffering life-long health problems as a result of this.

To have one healthy child at a time should be the ideal outcome of fertility treatment, but the patchy and inadequate funding for IVF and fierce commercial competition between clinics has not encouraged joined-up thinking on this matter. For too long, patients have been penalised by a system which encourages some of them to take unnecessary risks.

We must now hope that the HFEA's strategy really does make a difference, and warmly welcome the fact that the Interim Chair of the Authority, Walter Merricks, has written to the Health Minister to explain the link between patient concerns about single embryo transfer and the lack of funding for IVF treatment. Maybe now, finally, we will see a move towards the government's broken promises on this issue.

You can see the HFEA press release here