Fat women are denied IVF on NHS for ‘no reason – it’s just as effective if you’re overweight’
OBESE women are being unfairly penalised when it comes to IVF treatment, an Oxford Uni specialist claims.
Dr Rebecca Brown has called women who fall outside the "healthy" BMI boundaries "easy targets" for trusts looking to cut costs.
Writing in the journal Health Care Analysis, she's criticises Clinical Commission Groups (CCGs) in England who ration free IVF cycles based on a person’s BMI.
Dr Brown said that there was little evidence to suggest that IVF is any less effective in obese women than their slimmer peers - and that as a result, overweight women were being unfairly stigmatised because of a "blame culture".
Dr Brown says: "I have advocated a sceptical stance towards ‘evidence-based’ justifications for excluding obese people from NHS-funded IVF treatment.
“I have argued that the lack of high-quality evidence regarding the effectiveness of IVF in both obese and non-obese populations.
Risks of being obese
While obesity may not be as much of a risk factor for obesity as some authorities might claim, obesity can cause other huge health problems.
The NHS estimates that around one in four Brits are obese and one in five kids are also dangerously overweight.
It can increase your risk of:
- type 2 diabetes
- coronary heart disease
- high cholesterol
- gallstones
- sleep apnoea
- liver and kidney disease
- gestational diabetes
- many types of cancer increasing womb, bowel and breast
- stroke
“Age is the main factor which plays a role in the likelihood of pregnancy, and that is why IVF treatment on the NHS in England and Wales is not offered to women aged over 42.
“The reasons for this include the fact that egg quality starts to decrease after the age of 30 and after 35 both egg quality and quantity are significantly reduced.
“But here are many other reasons why a woman may struggle to conceive, including ovary malfunction endometriosis, and hormonal malfunction, premature menopause, and blocked tubes - NOT just their weight.
“National health bodies such as the UK’s NHS have had to make cost savings due to financial pressures, and sadly IVF treatment is one area where this has happened.
“Other reasons for limiting IVF may remain contentious and subject to debate, but Dr Brown’s analysis is interesting.”
Dr Brown even goes further to suggest anti-obesity is linked to a warped belief that people who are responsible for their ill health should eb less of a priority for treatment than those who are supposedly not responsible.
She adds: "Given the highly stigmatised nature of obesity, the ambiguity around the status of subfertility as a ‘disease’, and the confusion around the methodologies used to assess its cost-effectiveness, she says it is unsurprising that CCGs have chosen to deny IVF treatment to the overweight.”
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