BRITISH couples who have difficulty starting a family are among the least likely in Europe to receive the IVF treatment that they need.

According to a new league table published yesterday, Britain came 12th out of 15 countries that provided data for 2003, with only Macedonia, Croatia and Austria performing fewer cycles of fertility treatment per head of population.

Clinics in Denmark, the top-rated country, where most IVF is provided free by the State, conducted 2,031 cycles per million inhabitants, compared with 633 in Britain. France, the country most comparable in size, comes ninth, with 1,009.

In global terms, Britain finished 16th out of 34 countries. Most of the lower-ranked nations, with the exception of America, which has no reimbursed provision of IVF, are from the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East or Latin America. Israel headed the world table by a distance, with 3,263 cycles per million; IVF is available free, and without limits.

Anders Nyboe Andersen, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, who led the team that compiled the European data, said that Britain’s position came as no surprise given the low priority that funding IVF receives from the NHS.

While the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has recommended that three cycles be provided free to most couples in which the woman is under 40, the Government has asked primary care trusts to pay for only one and many do not offer even this limited service.

North Lincolnshire PCT is the latest to scrap free IVF treatment because of financial deficits. Dame Suzi Leather, chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, recently described access to IVF as “the No 1 problem faced by patients” and called on the Government to implement the NICE guidelines.

Dr Andersen told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Prague: “The main reason for Britain’s position is that (IVF) is not available from the State.”

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