March 14, 2010

IVF in the headlines

I can’t have been the only person who almost choked on my coffee and croissants when I read the Sunday Times this morning. Couples are being invited to enter a lottery to have some ultra-expensive IVF. I suppose it is slightly better than IVF on the NHS – because I am not sure that we should be seeing our taxes spent on people having children when the NHS is held back by NICE who are in the business of denying sick people a chance of life because of cost.

I was surprised to see that infertility is such a problem. It seems that as many as one in six couples are having trouble conceiving. This strikes me as extraordinary when we have it drummed into us from an early age about the importance of contraception.

But back to IVF. How can it be a panacea for so many childless couples? Surely the first port of call is education. Because apparently a woman can only conceive for about 3 or 4 days every month. So it follows that for over 3 weeks of every monthly cycle there is nothing much you can do – and there is nothing to get stressed and worried about – until next time.

Now admittedly I am not a doctor – but the key to couples having babies is surely to know and understand their cycles. As one of the key problems associated with infertility is an irregular cycle – then simply knowing when ovulation occurs is a big step forward – because you can plan your love life around when there is trhe best chance of conception.

Last year there was a real breakthrough in home fertility monitoring by some scientists from the University of Cambridge. Now their invention is on the market -DuoFertility. Not only can it predict fertile days simply and accurately, it is backed with a comprehensive fertility expert support programme. This means you not only have the most advanced and accurate monitor on the market – you have the reassurance of having your own team of highly qualified fertility experts.

I see from the newspapers that DuoFertility is at least as effective as IVF at 1/10th of the price. To my mind that is a better deal than an IVF lottery.

IVF in the headlines

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