Watchdog Favours Free IVF Treatment

THE debate over IVF treatment on the NHS re-opened after it was reported that a key health watchdog favours helping infertile women under 40.

The Daily Mail said the "ruling" by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) would force NHS trusts to treat thousands more patients and cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

However Nice stressed that no final decisions had been taken.

The newspaper said the proposal, offering up to six attempted treatments at a potential cost of £15,000 a patient would trigger a major controversy over how the NHS could find the money and whether funding for treatments such as cancer care would suffer.

If the health service took over all existing private sector IVF cases, the cost would be about £400 million a year, it said.

Fertility problems are believed to affect one in six couples in Britain, and there are 27,000 IVF attempts each year. Only one in five is funded by the NHS.

The newspaper reports that Nice's draft guidance says the best chances of pregnancy would be provided by offering three attempts with fresh embryos and three with frozen.

If a woman went through all six, it would take about two years.

Nice confirmed it was developing a clinical guideline on fertility treatment which it expected to publish next February.