Experts Advise Ban on Free IVF for Obese Women
By Kate Kelland
LONDON — Severely overweight women should be denied access to free fertility treatment in England and Wales and obese women must lose weight before being offered the chance to try IVF, experts said on Wednesday.
They also said in a report that no woman over the age of 40 should be allowed to start National Health Service-funded fertility treatment, and that single women and same sex couples should be offered the same access as heterosexual couples.
The British Fertility Society’s recommendations, which suggest women with a body mass index of 36 or more should be denied IVF treatment on the NHS, go further than current NHS guidelines which say overweight women should be warned of the health risks but do not impose a ban on treatment.
The BFS said women with a body mass index of 29 or more should be advised to undergo a program of diet and exercise before being allowed IVF treatment.
"Obese women are less likely to get pregnant and more likely to encounter health problems. It makes sense to address obesity before seeking fertility treatment," Richard Kennedy of the BFS told the BBC.
"The NHS is already stopping women who are obese from having fertility treatment," he added.
"What we are saying is that they should be less stringent and more consistent with how they apply this."
The BFS said its recommendations were aimed at tackling what it said was "a wide disparity" in the social criteria used by different NHS trusts to decide whether treatment should be allowed.
It said single women, lesbian couples and people who already have children from a previous relationship should not be excluded from NHS treatment.
"Continued inequality of access to treatment is unacceptable in a state-funded health service and the source of considerable distress to a great number of people with fertility problems," Dr Mark Hamilton, chairman of the BFS, said in a statement.
The society produced its report after surveying 64 licensed fertility clinics in England and Wales during the summer of 2005. Full results of the survey will be published in the Human Fertility journal later this month.