Local couples get top chance to start family

Infertile couples in Rochdale are being given more chances to conceive than most other areas.

Across the borough females aged 23 to 39 are offered three cycles of IVF, as are women in neighbouring Oldham and Tameside.

But the picture is not so good across other parts of Greater Manchester.

At the time of the survey Bury offered three cycles of treatment but only to women aged 39 and 40.

Nationally, five health trusts offer no IVF at all.

In 2004, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said couples should be given up to three cycles of IVF on the NHS, where the woman is aged 23 to 39.

But a damning report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Infertility said that 70 per cent of trusts across the country were ignoring guidelines and many primary care trusts had placed strict restrictions on the eligibility criteria.

The MPs report said health trusts were creating a postcode lottery of care and that the Nice guidelines had been “taken out of context by PCTs and used to place arbitrary restrictions on the provision of IVF.”

Gareth Johnson, Conservative MP for Dartford and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary group on Infertility, said: “One in seven couples in the UK suffer from infertility problems, indeed more women attend GP surgeries to obtain advice on infertility than any other issue other than pregnancy.

“This shows just how big an issue infertility is for so many people.”

Clare Lewis-Jones, chairman of the National Infertility Awareness Campaign and chief executive of Infertility Network UK, said the current situation was “totally unacceptable.”