Fertility Treatment

[derryman]

My wife and i have bee waiting 2 and a half years on NHS for fertility treatment. We have done the Clomid prodedure and were about to start IUI when it was announced that it would be no longer available! They said there would be a waiting list for when there was more funds available. I have been tested and everything is fine, same with my wife; just unexplained. We have made several inquiries and where told we would have to wait. I just saw todays local paper and there are many stories of couples with the same problem. Imagine how distraught we where to find that the couple waiting longest was 16 months. This means that we were somehow struck off or totally ignored. Does anyone know what we can do or been through this before?

[Belle Fast]

Don't be afraid to phone up the department concerned and (calmly) ask what has happened. Give them a number to phone you back when they have had time to discuss it with the doctor concerned and ask when it is likely you will be seen. The whole situation sounds really difficult, but that's good that they have not found a specific problem. Also, be careful about believing newspaper reports as they often get health news wrong.

[kazza12345]

i wonder if you have considered saving up for treatment, or persueing other avenues, ie fostering/adoption? I only ask because i cant really see when the nhs will have more funds available, as it is in such crisis treating ill people, and i would guess that whatever your personal views, fertility treatment would be somewhere near the bottom of the list of priorities at a time when so many nhs staff are being laid off.. People are waiting weeks and weeks for radiotherapy/chemotherapy treatment, and it's an age old debate in medical ethics really, that just because medical science can do something, does it mean there is an imperative to do it? It probably sounds very unsympathetic of me, i know, but i am just saying it might be best to proceed with the thought that the funding might not ever become available again, then you cant be disappointed. The discrepancy in the story in the paper, might mean something along the lines of the couple waited 16 months to even be seen, or for the clomid treatment.

I am only saying the above stuff because that is probably how the pct views fertility treatment in your area - as the bottom of a very long list with a very unfavourable cost/benefit ratio, and really i suppose that is how it should be