“POSTCODE LOTTERY” ECONOMIC DILEMMAS

“POSTCODE LOTTERY” Economic Dilemmas



“POSTCODE LOTTERY” Economic Dilemmas

Introduction

Couples seeking IVF treatment to help them have a baby face a "postcode lottery" across the country. According to the figures provided by the Ministry of Heath, there are more than two million couples, who experience infertility and 150,000 couples out of this population initiate an IVF programme each year. These figures are similarly conserved in elsewhere, for instance according to the numbers provided by National Health Institute, three and a half million people in the UK alone experience infertility. And 30,000 women sign up for the waiting list on IVF programme. The cost of IVF changes significantly in accordance with the location the treatment takes place. As I will discuss in the section devoted to “Economics of IVF”, there is a substantial financial difference between countries and even hospitals for various couples. In this paper we analysed the economic dilemmas in health care. Couples seeking IVF treatment to help them have a baby face a "postcode lottery" across the country. In this paper we discussed about the 'Postcode Lottery' in order to understand Couples Seeking Help IVF.

Discussion

Since the first IVF baby was born in 1978, there had been a rapid increase in the number of clinics providing infertility treatments. Considering one person out of seven is diagnosed for infertility, which adds up to 3.5 million people in the UK alone, the population of number of people that can go under infertility treatment is massive. Until 2000, 50.000 IVF babies were born85 and according to the NHS figures, 30.000 women undergo IVF each year and with the average success in conceiving a child of 15%, that is 8300 IVF babies per year. In 2004 it was shown that the UK is falling behind our Northern European counterparts with the amount of fertility treatment we provide, and consequently, the proportion of babies born as a result of ART86. The survey showed that during the year 2000 in the UK there were 580 cycles of fertility treatment per million people, compared to an average of 1057 per million in other Northern European countries (www.medicalnewstoday.com).

The complications due to IVF procedure remain significant, with five fold increase in small birth rate and pre-delivery, two-fold increase in still birth rate, in comparison to the natural conception methods. Another major complication about the IVF treatment is the risk of multiple births due to multiple embryo implementations. Women who become pregnant through IVF have a 25-30% of having twins, compared to 1 in 90 of the general population. Multiple births lead to increased risk to the babies and the mother because there is a higher chance of stillbirth, miscarriage, and premature delivery. There is also a financial implication, according to a news article published on BBC website, triplets cost more than £32,000 compared to about £9,000 for twins and just over £3,000 for single births. Current practice limiting the number of embryos implemented is reduced to a maximum of two in women under 40 and ...