SPEAKING OUT: Fertility specialist Professor Geeta Nargund said the 'young don't recognise the impact of age on fertility'
One
of Britain’s top NHS fertility specialists last night issued a stark
warning to women: Start trying for a baby before you’re 30 – or risk
never having children.
In
a strongly worded letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan,
consultant gynaecologist Professor Geeta Nargund has also demanded that
teenagers are taught about the dangers of delaying parenthood, because
of the spiralling cost to the taxpayer of IVF for women in their late
30s and 40s.
Professor
Nargund cites the agony of a growing number of women left childless as a
key reason why fertility lessons must be included in the national
curriculum. Her controversial
.intervention – in which she warns Britain faces a ‘fertility timebomb’ – will fuel the debate over the best time to start a family, amid the rise in women delaying motherhood to pursue careers.
In the letter, seen by The Mail on Sunday, Prof Nargund writes: ‘I have witnessed all too often the shock and agony on the faces of women who realise they have left it too late to start a family.
‘For so many, this news comes as a genuine surprise and the sense of devastation and regret can be overwhelming.
And so often the cry will be “Why did no one warn me about this?”’
Fertility issues placed a ‘costly and largely unnecessary burden on the NHS’, she said, warning that the IVF bill ‘looks set only to increase’. Hundreds of millions is already spent on IVF, with each treatment ‘cycle’ costing around £5,000.
Arguing passionately for fertility lessons, she tells Mrs Morgan: ‘Information is power and the best way to empower people to take control of their fertility is through education.’ Prof Nargund said last night: ‘Ideally, if a woman is ready for a child, she should start trying by the time she is 30. She should consider having a child early because as a woman gets older, her fertility declines sharply.’
I WAS TOO OLD TO CONCEIVE... AT JUST 35
Lesley Pyne, 53, helps women come to terms with infertility
When she was in her early 30s, Lesley Pyne never doubted she would one day become a mother. Recently married and pursuing a career as a Whitehall civil servant, she thought children would naturally follow in good time.
But when, at 35, she started trying for a baby with husband Roger, nothing happened.
Lesley, right, recalled: ‘When we were referred to the IVF clinic, we suddenly realised that I was probably too old. If we’d have known, we would have started sooner.’ Over the next five years they had six rounds of IVF.
At 40, Lesley decided to stop trying, knowing the statistics were stacked against her and feeling ‘physically and emotionally finished’.
Now 53, she helps other women come to terms with infertility.
She said: ‘A lot of women think they can just delay motherhood, have IVF and it will all be fine.’
If a woman started trying early enough, doctors would still have time to diagnose problems and take action before it was too late, she said.
Her comments were endorsed by Professor Allan Pacey, outgoing chair of the British Fertility Society.
‘You need to be trying by 30 because if there is a problem and you need surgery, hormones or IVF, then you’ve got five years to sort it out,’ he said. ‘If a woman starts trying at 35, doctors have got to sort it out when she is already on a slippery fertility slope’.
He went even further on educating youngsters on fertility, saying pupils should receive ‘age appropriate’ information from primary school to university.
Prof Nargund, lead consultant for reproductive medicine at St George’s Hospital in London and medical director of the private Create Fertility clinics in the UK said: ‘As women get older, they experience more complex fertility problems, so treatment tends to be less successful and more expensive.
‘On average, more [IVF] treatment cycles are required for a successful pregnancy. So educating people about fertility is very important for the public purse, because it will help us to get more babies within the same NHS budget.’
Egg quantity and quality is frequently the problem, she said, particularly among women in their late 30s and 40s.
In such cases, IVF is usually necessary. But there can be other factors at play, such as poor blood flow to the ovaries or uterus.
Prof Nargund and colleagues have helped pioneer diagnostic approaches using ultrasound scans and other tests to discern the problem before rushing to pricey IVF.
The cost is considerable: The NHS funded 25,571 IVF cycles in England and Wales in 2013, or 41 per cent of the total.
The average success rate is just one live birth per four cycles – meaning each IVF baby costs the taxpayer around £20,000. But the chance of IVF success falls rapidly with age, with only one in eight cycles being successful in women aged 40 to 42 using their own eggs.
The average age women give birth is now 30, according to the Office of National Statistics, which has cited more women going to university and pursuing careers as a key reason for older mothers.
With one in six couples now having trouble conceiving and the birth rate among UK-born mothers in long-term decline, Prof Nargund said Britain faced a ‘fertility timebomb’ that had to be addressed.
‘We can’t rely on net immigration to increase the country’s birth rate,’ said Prof Nargund, who moved to the UK from India as a medical student in the 1980s. ‘It’s not a permanent fix.’
Now 55, Prof Nargund started a family with her husband at 29, even though she was a busy junior doctor at the time, saying: ‘My biological clock was absolutely on my mind.’
Many young people were surprisingly poorly informed about the impact of age on fertility, she said. Neither did they know that smoking, too much alcohol, taking drugs, or being too fat or too thin negatively affected the chances of conception.
She added: ‘Educated women are not necessarily educated about their fertility.’
A Department for Education spokesman said: ‘Sex and relationship education is compulsory in all maintained secondary schools.
‘We also expect academies and free schools to deliver relationship education.
‘We trust schools to ensure the education they provide meets the needs of particular students. As such, they are free to talk about fertility or any other relevant issues.’
NO ONE SHOULD TELL MY PUPILS WHEN TO HAVE A CHILD, WRITES CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF GIRLS' DAY SCHOOL TRUST
Helen Fraser is the chief executive of the Girls' Day School Trust
PROFESSOR NARGUND is right to say that girls need to be educated about their bodies and understand their own fertility, writes Helen Fraser.
But the threat of infertility should not be used as a stick to beat women into reproducing early.
Women in their 20s have so much to think and worry about, and I am concerned that warnings like this unnecessarily add to the pressure by making them feel that the biological clock is striking ever more loudly in their ears. Nobody should be dictating to them: ‘This is when you should have your baby.’
I think we have to be very careful about adding to that pressure and trying to push decisions on young women which may not be the right decision for them.
It is true fertility tends to decline in a woman’s thirties, but I think it is vital to get matters in perspective. It does not suddenly fall off a cliff. It declines quite gently in the early thirties.
And 44 per cent of women who start trying to conceive at 40 will get pregnant within a year, according to one study. In addition, infertility is not just due to age. There are also other reasons, such as endometriosis.
I also think Professor Nargund’s perceptions of the scale of infertility in Britain may be affected by her job.
People who attend IVF clinics are a very small sample of the population and they are not a representative one.
In 2012, there were about 14,000 live births thanks to IVF in England and Wales. But there were more than 700,000 babies born who were conceived naturally.
We should not be concerned that the average age that women now give birth is 30. It shows that women are very carefully balancing what they know about their fertility, their family and their employment circumstances to make the best decision for themselves.
The young women I meet are very aware of the ticking of the biological clock. How could they not be?
Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb spoke out about the decision not to prosecute nurses at Glan Clwyd hospital in North Wales
DAMNING: Mail On Sunday's report last year
Minister slams hospital care scandal police
By Simon Walters, political editor for the Mail On Sunday
The ‘incomprehensible’ decision not to prosecute nurses at an NHS hospital where patients were treated like ‘animals’ was attacked by Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb last night.
He spoke out after relatives of dementia patients at Glan Clwyd hospital in North Wales criticised the police response to last week’s official report into the scandal, first exposed by The Mail on Sunday last October.
Welsh health chiefs apologised for the ‘inexcusable’ way that patients were abused in the hospital’s Tawel Fan ward. One family told the inquiry that visiting the hospital was like seeing ‘captured animals’.
Other families saw patients ‘crawling on dirty floors’ and ‘like a zombie... drugged up’.
But despite uproar over the scandal, police said there were no plans to prosecute staff accused of negligence.
Responding for the first time to the report, Cabinet Minister Mr Crabb said: ‘It is difficult to comprehend how such an appalling case of negligence and abuse has not led to any prosecutions. This is about as damning a verdict of the Welsh NHS as we have had.
‘The Welsh Labour Government urgently need to take action to demonstrate that they are up to the job of protecting the most vulnerable in our society.’
The official report came after this newspaper revealed how elderly patients were left covered in faeces, injured themselves crawling on urine-covered floors and were physically restrained with tables and chairs.
Last week’s independent inquiry said that the way Tawel Fan ward was run was a violation of patients’ human rights. Eight members of nursing staff have been suspended on full pay as a result of the scandal.
source: Daily mail