5 days ago
World IVF Day: The gaps in coverage for B.C. parents
Friday marks World IVF Day, celebrating the first successful IVF birth in 1978 and the advancements in fertility medicine since then.
It comes as applications for B.C's publicly funded in vitro fertilization program opened on July 2 and patients are already receiving money.
It can cost anywhere from $18,000 to $20,000 for one round of IVF – a medical procedure that involves retrieving a woman's eggs and a man's sperm, combining the two in a lab and transferring the embryo to a woman's uterus.
Dr. Beth Taylor is a fertility specialist at Olive Fertility clinic in Vancouver. She says cost is the biggest deterrent to seeking treatment, but the provincial funding is 'not enough.'
'That's always the case, right?' Taylor said. 'It's never enough. So only a small percentage, actually, of our patients will get funding.'
Taylor says approximately 500 patients at Olive have already applied, and some have received the money, but there are backlogs and limits to who can access coverage.
'There's two big limits the government has put in place,' she said. 'One is age … A lot of our patients come in their early 40s (and) won't qualify. And the other is financial, so people whose total family income is less than $100,000 will get quite a bit, and then people whose total family incomes (are) more than $250,000 wont get any.'
Laura Spencer is a fertility coach and underwent IVF herself in 2015, being forced to pay out of pocket.
'There were 15 months there where people who were anticipating a fully funded cycle (from the province) then find out, when the program starts, it is much less (funding) or they are ineligible all together,' said Spencer.
Still, the program has created conversations around fertility and helped to decrease stigma.
Dr. Caitlin Dunne is a fertility specialist at Pacific Coastal Reproductive Medicine.
'We just got funding,' she said. 'It's very validating to people who are struggling with infertility to say, 'This is a medical disease, this is worthy of treatment,' and a lot of these patients have renewed hope.'
Taylor says she hopes the funding sparks a call for more support for other fertility procedures like egg freezing or covering donor eggs and sperm, as well as surrogacy.
'I think they're going to see the enormous demand for this and the enormous success that comes from this program, so I am optimistic,' she said.
