Help save NHS IVF in Bedfordshire

Fertility Fairness
Please help: write to your MP today. Bedfordshire health bosses are consulting on whether to cut NHS fertility services completely. Bedfordshire clinical commissioning group (CCG) currently provides 1 NHS-funded cycle of IVF for eligible people with fertility problems; the consultation is to ask local people whether this 1 cycle of IVF or ICSI should be removed. This would mean that anyone diagnosed with fertility problems in Bedfordshire and needing IVF or ICSI would have to pay for fertility treatment.
 
We are campaigning hard to stop this happening but patients can make a crucial difference by completing the consultation questionnnaire before 24 July, available here https://www.bedfordshireccg.nhs.uk/page/?id=4958
Another way to register your views on this is to write to your local MP. You can contact your MP by writing a letter to them, emailing them or tweeting to them. The relevant contact details are below:
Richard Fuller MP (Con, Bedford) richard.fuller.mp@parliament.uk
Rt Hon Alistair Burt MP (Con, North East Bedfordshire) alistair.burt.mp@parliament.uk / nebca@northeastbedsconservatives.com
Nadine Dorries MP (Con, Mid Bedfordshire) dorriesn@parliament.uk
Andrew Selous MP (Con, South West Bedfordshire) andrew.selous.mp@parliament.uk
 

In order to make this as straightforward as possible for you, Infertility Network UK has prepared a draft letter/email (available half way down the webpage here). If you are comfortable doing so, it is helpful to include details of your personal situation: how fertility struggles affect you physically, emotionally, financially and socially.

You can also send a copy of your correspondence to:
Jane Ellison MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health at the Department of Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall London SW1A 2NS
Email: jane.ellison.mp@parliament.uk  Twitter: @janeellisonmp

Infertility Network UK and Fertility Fairness belive it is unacceptable and unethical to deny people access to NHS-funded fertility treatment based on their postcode. National guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends that it is both clinically and cost effective that all eligible couples should receive up to three full NHS-funded cycles of IVF or ICSI where women are aged under 40. However, just 17.2 per cent of England’s 209 CCGs follow this national guidance and provide access to three NHS-funded IVF cycles.