IVF rules ‘broken by officials’

Sep 7 2007 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

INFERTILE couples in Merseyside and Cheshire are being denied NHS treatment in breach of official guidelines, campaigners protested yesterday.

A Department of Health (DoH) study revealed that health officials were restricting IVF cycles to couples unable to conceive naturally in three key ways:

They are disqualified if they have a living child from a previous relationship, or an adopted child;

Any private IVF treatments are included in the maximum of three cycles allowed;

They are disqualified if either partner has been sterilised.

Yet, 2004 guidelines issued by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) said only that “priority” should be given to childless couples and made no mention of private payments, or sterilisation.

NICE, under pressure to end a “postcode lottery” in IVF availability, advised that eligible couples should be offered up to three cycles if the woman was between 23 and 39 years old.

The DoH then promised “at least one full cycle” to those eligible by 2005 and urged the NHS to work towards full implementation of three free cycles.

However, the survey, the details of which were only released after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed half of health authorities were restricting treatment in some way.

The primary care trusts (PCTs) in Merseyside and Cheshire drew up a joint “consensus policy” on IVF availability, which details the three key restrictions.

They were among the 40% of PCTs who disqualified couples with children from previous relationships.

Others imposed restrictions even more draconian, barring smokers, people considered too fat or thin and on age grounds.

Infertility Network UK, a support group which carried out the survey, said couples were “angry and very upset” at the failure of trusts to provide the promised treatment.

Chief executive Clare Brown said: “To know the treatment is out there but you cannot access it because of the decisions of your PCT compounds the impact of your not being able to have children.”

And Dari Taylor, chairwoman of the all-party parliamentary group on infertility, said: “Infertility is a disease and it should be diagnosed and treated as such.”

“The NICE guidelines say couples who have been seeking treatment for three years should be moving into treatment. Instead, we have women remortgaging to fund private treatment.”

A Liverpool PCT spokeswoman pointed to the “consensus policy”, which stated that limited NHS resources meant it was “not appropriate for treatments to be routinely available to all couples”.

Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister, said: “PCTs must make their own decisions about which treatments to fund.”

This week, it was revealed that more than one third of British couples experienced fertility problems and that they spent £1bn on private IVF treatment.