Draft Letter

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Draft letter to Premier David Alward

Send to dave@gnb.ca

Date

Dear Premier Alward,

Infertility currently affects 1 in 6 couples in Canada and is increasingly evident as social and financial pressures delay couples’ decisions to have children and pollution levels deteriorate overall reproductive health. Currently, couples are burdened with most or all the costs of fertility treatments; one in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment costs approximately $10,000, and many couples will require several treatments to become pregnant. This high cost severely limits access to treatment and forces many patients to cease their treatments before a pregnancy has been achieved. When it is only possible to finance a limited number of IVF cycles, couples and their doctors often elect to increase the chance of pregnancy from treatment by having more than one embryo transferred to the uterus during a cycle. The consequence of this practice is an alarming 30% multiple-birth rate for pregnancies resulting from IVF on average across the provinces. 

A singleton pregnancy entails the best outcomes for both mother and baby and is thus the gold standard of IVF. This type of pregnancy is considered low-risk compared to a multiple pregnancy, requiring fewer interventions during labour and delivery and leading to fewer premature, low birth-weight babies. In turn, fewer neonatal intensive care hospitalizations and potential long-term sequelae occur as a result of a singleton pregnancy.

Quebec achieved a striking reduction in multiple births from 27.2% to 3.8% within the first three months of their progressive ART program, which funds three cycles of IVF and can thereby enforce a single-embryo transfer policy where medically indicated. Budget impact analyses for implementation of a similar program in New Brunswick (Funding of IVF in New Brunswick: A Cost-Benefit Analysis [BIA], September 2010; Funding of IVF in New Brunswick: A Cost-Benefit Analysis [BIA], January 2011) project annual savings of (1) $1 – 1.7 million in peri-natal hospitalization costs, (2) $400,000 - $1 million in post-natal costs for the first year of surviving low birth weight babies, and (3) between $1.2 – 2.8 million in long term health and social costs of caring for children with disabilities as a result of pre-term birth. The full expense of funding three IVF cycles ($1.3-$2.2 million annually) will be completely offset by savings in hospitalization and post-natal care in the first year, and long-term disability costs will be avoided through the reduction in multiple births (BIA, 2010, p. 12; BIA, 2011, p. 12).

Inasmuch as couples in New Brunswick currently bear the financial burden of IVF, they feel pressured to maximize their chance of success and therefore prefer to transfer more than one embryo at a time.  Funding IVF will alleviate the financial stress that causes many couples to make this dangerous decision and enable the implementation of a single-embryo transfer policy. Overall, this initiative stands to greatly improve the quality of infertile New Brunswick taxpayer’s lives while adding to the number of New Brunswick taxpayers over time and keeping more dollars in provincial coffers.

In our personal situation...............

We strongly feel that the infertile community of New Brunswick deserves a government that recognizes the imperative of becoming a parent and that infertility is in fact a disease (WHO, 2009). Following in the footsteps of Quebec’s IVF funding experience will not only benefit New Brunswick’s provincial budget and New Brunswicker’s personal finances but will also improve quality of life for families touched by infertility. It would be another positive example of the forward thinking of the Conservative government of New Brunswick.

Sincerely,