It's progress I guess. But not much....

Earlier this year we spoke to Jill Fox, Senior Commissioning Manager at North Yorkshire and York PCT and she said that the PCT would be reviewing its position on Assisted Fertility Treatment in the autumn of 2008.

Having just got off the phone to her, we have found out that they have started to offer IVF (whoo hoo).

But only to those people who were on the waiting list when they closed it in 2007 (boo).

Anyone who found they required IVF after the spring of 2007 and missed out on the current waiting list will have to wait until at least April 2010 before they can join the new one!

So realistically, anyone requiring this important treatment in North Yorkshire will still have around a two year wait before they could have even a hope of being treated.

The NHS offers Top-ups...

So - the NHS is considering adopting mobile phone operatoresque payment plans. Top-up payments for your NHS care no less! No word about whether this will effect IVF provision in North Yorkshire yet - and we won't be holding out any hope that it will have any effect any time soon.

In fact, several weeks ago, we took the liberty of asking our GP whether any of the drugs would be available to us via the NHS (our own little form of Top-up payments). But of course they are not. Not only is IVF treatment not available to the vast majority of residents in North Yorkshire, but none of the drugs that make up any the treatment are available either. Because of our postcode.