Expert fears problem for 1 in 3 couples fertility

James Meikle, health correspondent
Tuesday June 21, 2005

The Guardian

Couples in Britain and across Europe are facing a fertility time bomb which would see as many as one in three unable to conceive without treatment in 10 years' time, a fertility expert forecast yesterday.

Bill Ledger, who runs a clinic in Sheffield, warned that a combination of women delaying having babies, a rising tide of sexually transmitted diseases, huge increases in childhood obesity and a decline in male fertility were ingredients for an alarming situation. Professor Ledger said that the infertility problem would double within a decade from its already significant levels.

About one in seven couples have problems with fertility now, and that would rise to as many as one in three to four "depending on what the population does".

About 6% of girls are thought clinically obese, a figure expected to grow unless action to improve exercise and diet is stepped up.

That could lead to problems years later when the women fail to ovulate or fall more prone to conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome.

Chlamydia cases among young women have doubled in England and Wales in recent years. This could lead again to reproduction problems 10 to 15 years down the line.

A woman's fertility plummets after the age of 35. Prof Ledger, from the University of Sheffield and the Jessop hospital in Sheffield, said France had begun to reverse the trend by offering tax breaks to encourage women to have children earlier.

The government in Britain had said "some good things about improving the quality of childcare and extending school hours" but some southern European countries might face problems as the traditional family unit broke up without the infrastructure to support single mothers or working parents.

Countries still needed the political will to allow women to have babies earlier by taking a break from their careers, and help them and their families look after their children. "This is part of a civilised society I think we should aspire to."

Prof Ledger, speaking to journalists attending the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, said: "Senior members of the Labour party have clearly agreed fertility is an illness and should be treated as that."

Fertility clinics saw the problems infertility brought on couples, including unhappiness and marital breakdown. Treatment was, he accepted, a luxury "compared with horrid cancers and heart disease but in a wealthy society, it is a luxury we can afford".

The one in seven statistic related to Britain, but Prof Ledger believed the picture was broadly the same across Europe.

Since April, the NHS in England has promised women under 40 one free cycle of IVF, which when offered privately can set couples back as much as £5,000 to £6,000 when all the costs are taken into account.

Thousands of people are travelling within Europe and going to places such as South Africa and Barbados in search of treatments.

A fertility clinic in Barbados offers holiday packages in addition to IVF treatment, which itself costs around £3,300 before the necessary drugs are taken into account.

Restrictions on fertility treatment in Italy are also thought to be encouraging women to seek help in places such as Spain, where egg donors can be paid, and eastern European countries, where costs are cheaper.

Claire Brown, the chief executive of Infertility Network UK, said the numbers of those seeking fertility treatment abroad were "increasing for a number of reasons, including waiting lists in the UK, shortage of donors and the fact donor anonymity was removed.

"The treatment is extremely stressful and a holiday gives you something to get your mind off it a bit more and gives you the opportunity to relax a bit more."

Jean Paul Maytum, a spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said: "In the UK you are going to walk into a clinic and get a reasonable level of service, you are not going to get ripped off. If you are going to another country, you don't know what you are going to get." He added that there could be problems "if you are unhappy with how the treatment is done".

Professor Guido Pennings, professor of ethics and bioethics at Ghent University, Belgium, said people were already voting with their feet.

Reproductive tourism was not a problem but "a safety valve that allows some degree of personal freedom for dissenting individual citizens on the one hand and democratic decision-making on the other hand. It contributes to a peaceful co-existence of different ethical and religious views in Europe".

(The Guardian)