NEARLY half of the £620,000 government budget set aside for fertility treatment last year is set to be redirected to “offset wider pressures” within the Health Department.
Deputy Lucy Stephenson said she was “really disappointed” and “annoyed” to learn that around £280,000 of the funding had been quietly reallocated – with details “buried in a document lodged three days before Christmas”.
“It simply isn’t fair,” she said, arguing that the underspend was not the result of a lack of demand, but instead a consequence of what she described as overly restrictive access criteria.
“Had this £280,000 underspend been due to low demand I’d have understood, but it isn’t – it is a direct consequence of the government rationing access to treatment,” the St Mary, St Peter and St Ouen representative said.
The ministerial decision blamed the underspend on delays in contracting providers, which meant that only one organisation signed up instead of the planned two and delivered IVF services for just half of the year.
But Deputy Stephenson, who has been open about her own fertility struggle and lodged the original proposition to improve funding in Jersey, said “there is no evidence to support this” .
She added that “dozens of Islanders with proven medical conditions were being denied access to funded treatment” last year, despite money being available.
Some, she said, had found ways to pay privately – “using savings, getting into debt, family support, choosing treatment over buying a home and so on” – while others had been unable to pursue treatment at all.
“These are people who desperately want to be parents or to grow their own families – our population of the future – and to do so in Jersey,” said Deputy Stephenson.
“They are people already going through what will likely be one of the most stressful times of their lives, emotionally and physically, and who therefore do not need added financial stress on top.”
Last year, it emerged that only £62,000 of the annual IVF budget had been spent in the first six months of the scheme – despite 43 Islanders being assessed and turned away under the new criteria.
Two-thirds of those rejected were refused funding because they or their partner already had a child.
At the time, Assistant Health Minister Andy Howell said the underspend had been anticipated as the new system bedded in.
“We recognise that the existing IVF criteria may be too restrictive, and we have committed to review them,” she said in September.
Deputy Stephenson said she would now call on the minister to reverse the decision to reallocate the underspend and instead ring-fence it for IVF treatment this year.
She said this would create a “buffer” while updated eligibility criteria were introduced and more accurate data on demand was gathered.
Deputy Stephenson also renewed her call for immediate changes to the rules.
“The restrictive criteria which is needlessly rationing treatment should also be widened immediately, removing non-clinical criteria such as previous children,” she added.
