Another trust cuts fertility funding

So, now NHS Bury has decided to stop funding IVF too - apparently as part of a plan to save "millions of pounds". Well, I just hope the plan includes an awful lot of other things, as they're not going to save a single million by stopping fertility treatment.

In 2008, they funded a total of 31 treatment cycles - which means they'd probably struggle to save much more than £100,000 by cutting treatment altogether. That may seem quite a lot of money but in terms of their multi-million pound annual budget, it is peanuts. I suspect the board at NHS Bury could do with a few lessons in health economics - causing so much misery and depression for such a small saving is not good policy, it's a lazy way to make it look as if you are doing something by snipping away at small budgets,

IVF is not always successful, but the pain of involuntary childlessness is far easier to bear if you know that you had the opportunity to try to overcome your fertility problem. And let's be clear, a fertility problem is a health problem not a "lifestyle issue". I am never entirely sure why blocked Fallopian tubes or polycystic ovary syndrome are conveniently no longer classified as medical problems when it comes to funding fertility.

NHS Bury is also cutting "other discretionary procedures" such as cosmetic surgery, apart from in exceptional cases (which suggests a lot of unexceptional ones have been funded in the past) and homeopathy treatments. Says it all really...