The high cost of IVF

I was so pleased to see Lord Winston challenging IVF costs in the Independent today. When I started having fertility treatment fifteen years ago, we spent less than five thousand pounds on three full cycles of treatment, which included a number of frozen embryo transfers. Today, many couples would be lucky to see change from that for one fresh cycle. Inflation and advanced techniques may have made IVF more expensive, but I've often wondered how it has become quite so much more expensive.

Lord Winston has calculated that a treatment cycle ought to cost about £1,200 and believes that exploitation is going on in both the private sector and in the NHS. He says the cost of freezing and storage of embryos, eggs and sperm can be hundreds of pounds a year, when the real cost to the clinic is no more than £10 per year.

It's high time there was a debate on this issue. I've done any number of media interviews in the last year or two where the high cost of IVF treatment, often quoted as five thousand pounds a cycle, is used as a reason why the NHS shouldn't be funding treatment. A more realistic price for fertility treatment might go some way towards increasing acceptance of IVF as a treatment for a medical condition.

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