IVF Use Rises in Australia as Older Women Seek Fertility Help
Reported September 17, 2008
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) — Fertility treatments rose 4.6 percent in Australia in 2006, spurred by women in their late 30s and 40s seeking help falling pregnant, a new report shows.
Australian fertility clinics performed 48,706 treatment cycles in 2006, the most recent year for which national data is available, compared with 46,481 in 2005. The report, released today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in Canberra, shows one in six programs produced a live birth.
The average age of women who had fertility treatment in 2006 was 35.6 years, from 35.2 years in 2002, and the proportion of women older than 40 years increased to 16 percent from 14 percent, signaling a nationwide trend toward delayed parenthood.
“The vast majority of couples we see who are over 40, for example, have only just met,” said Peter Illingworth, a Sydney- based doctor and president of the Fertility Society of Australia. “It’s not that they have made a conscious decision to do it in their 40s, it’s that the opportunity to have children has only just arisen later on in a woman’s life.”
The Australian government spent A$228 million ($183 million) subsidizing in-vitro fertilization programs in 2007. That helped reduce the average out-of-pocket cost of a treatment cycle for an insured Australian to A$1,000-A$1,500, said Dr. Michael Chapman, head of women’s and children’s health at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
“The driver of demand in Australia is similar to most Western countries, where there is large government subsidy of the service,” Chapman said in an interview. Also, “couples are becoming concerned earlier about whether they’re fertile or not and perhaps not waiting long periods of time before they make the decision to seek help.”
The first IVF baby was born 30 years ago in Australia, which produced the world’s first birth resulting from a frozen embryo.