CHR - Press Relations
Blog topic: Foreign Fertility Patients
Canadian investigators recently reported at the Annual ESHRE Meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, that approximately 5,000 patients from abroad annually seek infertility treatments in the U.S. This is believed to reflect approximately 8% of the country's annual treatment volume (Johnson K, OB.GYN. News, September 2009). Amongst those, a considerable percentage was Canadian, representing approximately 7% of the Canadian IVF volume.
Amongst Canadians, egg donation (80% of patient volume) was in high demand since Canada has practically run out of egg donors since legislation prohibited reasonable pay to donors. This is, of course, just one more example for how government intervention in health care matters can have detrimental effects.
In this context it is, indeed, worthwhile to quickly, once more, raise the question why so many patients from other countries come to the U.S. for fertility services. Not only do they have to face the inconvenience and cost of travel to receive their medical care, but medical services in the U.S. (fertility services included) are on the average twice as expensive as in other developed countries. And, still they are coming!
The answer is, of course, that it must be worth for these patients to carry these additional burdens. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it!
CHR investigators have extensively published on the differences in pregnancy rates between the U.S. and Europe (in a recent issue of CHR UPDATE, as well as an article in Fertility & Sterility) and underlying causes. It always comes down to one or the other form of government intervention. Whether it is via national insurance coverage mandates or simply political intervention into the practice of medicine for ideological or religious reasons, the end product is always poorer quality of medical outcomes. This is a lesson we should carefully consider in the current debate on reforming this country's health care system.
We, however, suggest for all of those who have not conceived by that time that they seriously consider a switch to state-of-the-art Western infertility care.
Media contact: 212-994-4400 x.4491CHR's Media Blog is a compilation of potential story ideas gathered from infertility-related news, our research, and our opinion to facilitate open communication with the public on this increasingly relevant field of medicine.
Editors, reporters and producers are invited to contact CHR for background or clarification on any content posted here. Also, our team of fertility experts has considerable experience providing comments for publication on infertility-related subjects and participating on broadcast panels to share our expertise.
