Sunday Express leads campaign for IVF crackdown
FERTILITY doctors and MPs are backing a petition to crack down on IVF clinics putting lives at risk by over-prescribing drugs to harvest up to four times more eggs from women than necessary.
How IVF works
Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh is backing a petition in the Sunday Express today calling for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to be amended to protect women.
It currently only has the power to protect a child conceived through IVF treatment.
The petition will demand women do not have their health put at risk from unnecessary drugs during fertility treatment. Ms McDonagh said: “It is a scandal that cannot continue.”
In 2016 there were 865 hospital admissions due to IVF drugs and at least four deaths in previous years.
It is a scandal that cannot continue.
Fertility drugs used to boost egg production can have severe side-effects without raising the chance of conception.
Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome occurs in about a third of IVF cycles. Symptoms include abdominal pain, bloating, nausea and vomiting.
Up to 10 per cent of the 70,000 women a year who have IVF get a more severe form of the condition.
Since 2014, a total of 50,000 women had over the optimal 15 eggs collected in a cycle but 20,000 had 20 and 10 women had 61.
Dr Nargund, medical director of Create Fertility, said: “Sometimes desperate and vulnerable women are given too many drugs.”
Lee Cowden, 39, from Waltonon-Thames, Surrey, had a heart attack at 26 after being overprescribed ovarian stimulation drugs. She later had two children – Molly now nine and Ruby, seven – with milder IVF treatment.
HFEA said egg collection “mostly occurs without any harm”.
It also said clinics must abide by its guidelines to minimise risk.
The petition is at change.org