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

Donor eggs for black women

As more and more people who need donor eggs consider travelling abroad to avoid long waiting lists at many clinics at home, there is good news for black women from Barbados Fertility Centre. They've been actively recruiting donors locally for some time, and are now in the position of having more donor eggs from black women than they have potential recipients. This may be of great interest to black British women who often face incredibly long waits for treatment with donor eggs in the UK. You can find out more about the clinic and the treatment they offer at www.barbadosivf.org

an interview later...

I've just done an interview for LBC radio about IVF funding, which they'd linked to Robert Edwards getting the Nobel prize. It's such a shame that on the day one of our country's greatest scientists gets awarded for his ground-breaking work, we end up discussing how to cut all funding for an amazing treatment that was invented here. We carry out less fertility treatment in the UK, and considerably less funded treatment, than most of the rest of Europe - and yet this was a field in which we once led the world.

It always fascinates me when I do these interviews that there is a general assumption that the NHS is funding huge amounts of treatment at the moment, when in fact that isn't the case at all. It's a tiny percentage of the NHS budget and cutting it would cause such distress. Today the person interviewing me equated IVF with breast-enlargement operations for teenagers - it seems to get worse by the day...

IVF pioneer honoured at last!

What fabulous news that Robert Edwards, the scientist behind the birth of world's first IVF baby, has finally received a Nobel prize!

It has always rather mystified me that Robert Edwards hasn't received a Nobel prize for medicine in the past. His work has led to the birth of millions of IVF babies around the world, and has allowed many couples who would never otherwise have been able to conceive to have families of their own. Working with Patrick Steptoe, he'd been widely criticised for his work, with much scepticism about IVF from the medical profession as well as the church and the general public.

It's just a shame that they waited so long to honour him, as he is now 85 and not at all well. I went to interview him a few years ago, and I know how much he would appreciate finally receiving this prize. He explained to me that his conviction had allowed him to continue his work despite all the opposition, and that had led him to develop what has now been recognised as "a milestone of modern medicine".

It's not often that you meet someone whose life is really inspiring, and who you feel quite humbled to have the opportunity to speak to. Robert Edwards is a wonderful man, passionate about helping those with fertility problems and this is a truly well-deserved, if somewhat tardy, recognition of all that he has done. And on a personal note, it has cheered up my day no end!

Read more here

Reduced cost IVF for charity members

I wrote a while ago about the Benenden Healthcare Society, a mutual not for profit organisation which provides healthcare to public sector employees - and is offering IVF at reduced cost. The Society has now voted to open up to all those who are members of charities too, which means that anyone who has joined Infertility Network UK for support can benefit from this.

Benenden Hospital in Kent is a subsidiary of the society and has charitable trust status. It provides healthcare for members of the trust, and has its own fertility centre. Although IVF treatment cannot be offered free, it is subsidised - members who have been with the society for six months or more qualify for IVF at reduced cost.

You can find out more at www.benenden.org.uk

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...