Britain is languishing near the bottom of the league table of European countries offering childless couples access to fertility treatment, it was revealed yesterday.
Britain is languishing near the bottom of the league table of European countries offering childless couples access to fertility treatment, it was revealed yesterday.
Out of 13 nations, the UK is 11th in the list, providing just 729 IVF treatment cycles per million of population. Britain's state-funded IVF rate is three times lower than Denmark and Belgium's, according to the latest available figures.
Denmark was top of the table with 2337 treatment cycles per million, followed by Belgium, Iceland, Finland and Sweden. Only Germany and Montenegro had lower rates than the UK.
The figures are from the latest survey of Assisted Reproductive Technology by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (Eshre).
Eshre's European IVF Monitoring Consortium collected the data in 2006. Clare Lewis-Jones, chief executive of the charity Infertility Network UK, said: "We are angry that although the UK pioneered infertility treatment, we are still among the lowest providers in Europe.
"These figures show that availability in the UK is less than one-third of that in Denmark."
The National Institute of health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which vets NHS treatments for cost efficiency, says childless couples should be entitled to three free IVF cycles. However, most patients only qualify for one.
Ms Lewis-Jones said: "More needs to be done to ensure that patients have equal and timely access to the full range of treatment recommended by Nice, and to tackle the on-going variations in provision that exist across the country.
"To be so far behind other countries in Europe in the provision of fertility treatment is totally intolerable." The survey also showed that IVF pregnancy rates were improving. In 2006, the average pregnancy rate per embryo transfer in Europe was 32.8% after standard IVF and 33.6% after Icsi treatment, which involves injecting a sperm straight into an egg.
This compared with 26.1% for standard IVF and 26.4% after Icsi in 1997. Danish expert Professor Anders Nyboe Andersen said Britain's poor IVF access record was not simply down to lack of funding. He said part of the reason why Denmark's figure was so much higher was simple efficiency.
"The Scandinavian model is to be very focused," he told Eshre's annual meeting in Amsterdam.
"All the public sector clinics are not doing a lot of other gynaecological activities. We are very focused just on fertility."
Sarah Norcross, director of the UK assisted-conception charity the Progress Educational Trust, said: "Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, was born 31 years ago in the UK.
"It is a scandal that the UK is lagging behind the rest of Europe in funding treatment.
"There is the political will for funding IVF, there are skilled doctors and nurses keen to treat more patients and there are women desperate for treatment."
