For families struggling with infertility, IVF access poses more difficulty: experts

British Columbia announced it will fund in vitro fertilization but experts say many Canadians struggle to get accessible and affordable IVF even with such supports.

Experts are welcoming the news B.C. will soon start funding in vitro fertilization (IVF), saying it can help people struggling to grow their family with accessing care that can be prohibitively expensive.

“Unfortunately, many people do require IVF to start and to grow their families,” Dr. Kimberly Liu, head of the University of Toronto’s Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility division told Global News. “And we know that the cost of IVF can be prohibitive and make it inaccessible for patients.”

One in six Canadians struggle with infertility, according to the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS).

IVF is an intensive and complex process that helps people struggling with fertility to become pregnant.

Medical professionals give a women medication to stimulate between 12 and 15 eggs at once. Once the eggs mature, Liu said, health-care workers retrieve them with the patient sedated, inserting a needle into the ovaries.

Eggs are then placed into “a very specialized embryology lab” with environmental controls. The eggs are fertilized with a sperm sample, grown for between three to seven days, and then injected back into the woman’s uterus, Liu said.

The CFAS says nearly 110,000 egg retrievals took place in Canada between 2013 and 2019.

Liu put the cost of one round between $10,000 and $20,000.