RCOG Consumers' Forum

I'm going to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists tomorrow for a meeting of their Consumers' Forum. The Forum is a great idea, providing lay input into the expert papers and guidelines the College produces and the meetings are always fascinating - I come away having learnt a huge amount in a very short space of time! Women aren't always aware how much information the College produces - or how helpful and interesting it can be. It's really worth taking a look at the website if you have a spare moment - see www.rcog.org.uk

IVF blunders

It's every IVF patient's worst nightmare - to discover that something has happened to the precious eggs,sperm or embryos that you have left at the fertility clinic. The news that a couple from Wales had lost all their donated eggs after an accident at the clinic is heartbreaking - the highs and lows of infertility are hard enough to cope with and it is hard to imagine how utterly devastating this news must have been.

The despair of the couple must also have been felt by the member of staff responsible - can you imagine how awful it would be to know that you might have ruined a couple's only chance to have a baby? It was clearly a mistake, and human error is something we can't ever eliminate entirely, What's really worrying about this story though is that it happened at the same clinic where we recently learnt that stored sperm was mistakenly destroyed. It may be an unfortunate coincidence, but fertility patients will be rightly anxious about entrusting their precious gametes to a clinic which seems to have a less than perfect record on this front. One can only hope that all procedures at the clinic have been reviewed to minimise the chances of anything like these two incidents happening again.

Find out more about fertility problems - free event in Birmingham

If you live in or near Birmingham, you will be interested in a free event being organised by the charity Wellbeing of Women on December 7. It's an opportunity to hear some experts talk about women's reproductive health and to ask questions. The event is in the evening from 6-7.30pm so you can go along after work.

Professor Siobhan Quenby of University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire will be talking about recurrent miscarriage and Caesarean sections, and Mr Justin Clark from Birmingham Women's Hospital will be discussing menstrual disorders, pelvic pain, endometriosis and fibroids. The event will be held at BVSC, 138 Digbeth, Birmingham B5 6DR.

You can find out more by calling 0207 772 6375 and you can RSVP to apatel.wellbeingofwomen@rcog.org.uk - and for more events organised by Wellbeing of Women see www.wellbeingofwomen.com

Is 57 too old for fertility treatment

I spent an hour reading the papers at the hairdressers today - a rare treat - but was sad to read the story in almost every paper of the pensioner IVF mother who says she now thinks that there should be an age cut-off for fertility treatment. She'd had a first child in her late fifties after fertility treatment at an overseas clinic, but a London clinic had offered to treat her again to try for a second. One of the reasons her case was said to be different was that her partner was considerably younger, but now they've split up and being a single mum in her sixties is clearly a pretty tough job.

Apparently she now says she thinks that 50 would be an appropriate upper age limit for fertility treatment, and as someone rapidly approaching a half century myself, I think she's right. There are so many women in their twenties, thirties and forties who desperately need donor eggs and it seems only fair that they should be treated rather than women in their fifties, who can hardly have been unaware that they were leaving it rather late to try to get pregnant.

Great first day at The Fertility Show

The first day of this year's Fertility Show was another huge success. I really enjoyed the day, catching up with so many old friends and making many new ones. Seeing all my old colleagues on the Infertility Network UK stand was a treat as always, and I spent some time with my new ones on the British Infertility Counselling Association stand. It was lovely to see the friendly teams from the Homerton, Guy's and Birmingham Women's Clinic, the fabulous women who run Verity, Zita West and her staff and Brigid Moss from Red magazine who has written a great new book about experiences of IVF.

I hope my talk was OK - this year I didn't speak too fast at least, which is one good thing! But I didn't leave enough time for questions - which was one bad thing!

I'm looking forward to tomorrow - come and see my question time with clinics from the US and Spain and find out all you need to know about treatment overseas!

Are men putting their fertility at risk?

There was an interesting piece in the Evening Standard this week about the way in which men's lifestyles can put their fertility at risk. We hear so much about women risking their fertility by delaying starting their families or by dieting or by not doing this or doing too much of that. It's good to hear some home truths about male fertility for a change.

The piece was based on a talk Dr Allan Pacey is due to give at The Fertility Show this weekend, explaining how drinking, smoking, recreational drugs and processed foods have led to an increase in male infertility - and unlike women, many men are apparently reluctant to change their lifestyles.

In nearly half of all couples with fertility problems, there is a male cause and it seems that age can make a difference to male fertility too. It's alcohol, poor diet, smoking and drugs such as cannabis and cocaine that can have a really serious impact for men - so if you want a baby, it'sn not just the female partner who should be starting on a health kick...

NHS fertility funds eaten up by single women - if you believe what you read in the papers...

According to the Daily Mail headlines last week, it seems that couples are 'losing out' in the IVF lottery because single women are being given treatment above them. Just the sort of headlines to confirm the prejudices of those who think the NHS is funding far too much fertility treatment. Apparently, one in five primary care trusts will fund IVF for single women. In theory, at least... And that's where the argument starts to lose ground.

As anyone who has tried to access fertility treatment on the NHS knows, the funding situation is a bit of a mess. Although PCTs may say they would fund treatment for single women, the numbers of single women who've actually received NHS treatment is likely to be incredibly low. IVF is a treatment for those with fertility problems - single women trying to conceive wouldn't start out by opting for IVF as very few women know they have a problem before they start trying to get pregnant. And if a single woman has a fertility problem, should we really say we won't give the necessary treatment to get over a medical condition because she doesn't have a partner? Whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of this, it doesn't alter the fact that the headlines were fundamentally inaccurate.

Reading the stories more closely, they'd carefully avoided any mention of how many single women had received NHS-funded IVF or how much this might have cost. Of course, the reality is that this is one of those occasions when the truth would have got in the way of a good story. Equally, there was no evidence to support the claim that these single women were being given preferential treatment over couples. A handful of single women having NHS-funded IVF hardly merits the headlines, and yet it's probably far closer to the real picture.