Childless couples are facing a widening postcode lottery after NHS officials ordered GPs to slash the amount of fertility treatment on offer to cut costs, stark new figures show.
Women in some areas are being denied access to the treatment altogether while others are facing new restrictions which appear to flout national guidelines.
One in five local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) said they had cut the number of IVF procedures they had funded over the past three years, the study by the health magazine, Pulse, found.
Some trusts have frozen funding for IVF completely while reduced the number of cycles on offer.
Funding chiefs blamed the economic downturn and the looming spending cuts for the decision but campaigners said many infertile couples were now being denied a “fundamental right”.
Under guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical excellence (Nice) GPs are advised to offer women under 40 up three cycles of IVF on the NHS.
But several trusts have recently ordered family doctors to cut the number of cycles on offer to two or one.
Nine PCTs – in Luton, Greater Glasgow & Clyde, Waltham Forest, Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham, Portsmouth, Bolton and West Kent – admitted they had not funded any IVF treatment for two years, acccording to the Pulse study.
NHS Warrington, which recently stopped all funding for IVF until at least 2011 insisted its priority had to be maintaining “high quality local healthcare”.
NHS Brighton and Hove, which now funds only two cycles, said the limit was in line with a region-wide policy across the south east of England.
Some GPs warned that the dilemma was “typical” of the problems they would have to grapple with under government plans to hand them control of their own budgets.
A total of 124 PCTs responded to questions put by the magazine under the Freedom of Information Act.
Read more about IVF or looking for a sperm or egg donor