Surrey funding cuts

So Surrey is the latest to jump on the bandwagon - hping to make up a deficit of £125 million pounds by axing spending on tattoo removal, treatments for baldness and guess what... yes IVF. However they managed to end up with a deficit of £125 million pounds, one can safely say that it wasn't by spending money on fertility treatment, which is estimated to be less than half a percent of total NHS spending. And it's interesting that they have managed to cut £7 million from their spending on "management" (which is still going to cost around £10 million a year).

It's easy to cut IVF spending. No one gets terribly upset, apart from the people waiting for treatment who are often so devastated by their experience of not being able to conceive that they find it hard to talk to their friends about it, let alone to start waving placards outside their local PCT offices. The long-term impact for these couples is usually neglected in talk about "priorities". We know that more than 90% of couples with fertility problems suffer depression, and this can often lead to other health problems. In the future, the opportunity to try to have a child if you can't do it easily will only be available for those who have the cash to pay.

What's really worrying about all this is the precedent that is being set. Surrey have cheerfully announced that "If you don't need it, the NHS won't pay for it." Who decides what constitutes "need"? Do you really "need" a hip replacement? Or a cataract operation? Do children "need" free prescriptions? Do pregnant women "need" scans? If the NHS is only there to deal with life-threatening conditions, then we don't "need" an awful lot of what it does, but is that really a future that anyone wants?

Is fertility-related stress a good thing?

If you've ever worried about your stress levels when you're going through fertility treatment, you can stop worrying now. A new study has found that women who were most stressed during treatment had a higher pregnancy rate than those who rated themselves lower down the stress scale.

The researchers in the States weren't expecting this outcome when they studied more than 200 women going through treatment as it is generally believed that stress has a negative impact on fertility. They found that women who put themselves high on the stress score appeared to have a 20-30% higher pregnancy rate than those who were less stressed

There is nothing less helpful when you are going through fertility treatment than being told that it won't work if you are stressed - infertility causes a huge amount of stress, and telling women that they are making things worse by feeling stressed ends up being a vicious circle - you feel guilty about being stressed which then makes you more stressed, so you have to feel even more guilty about being more stressed etc. For that reason alone we should welcome this new research.

You can read more here