Oxfordshire PCT - Shame On You!

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Oxfordshire PCT has a duty of care to the residents of Oxfordshire to plan and secure health services and improve the health of the local population.

But did you know that while Oxfordshire PCT attempt to do this that they have created policies that discriminate some of the most venerable Oxfordshire residents?

Oxfordshire is one of the highest tax paying counties in the UK; however we receive one of the lowest budgets for our local health service. Oxfordshire PCT hides behind this fact when they try to wriggle out of arguments when they have no way of defending their own discriminative policies.

This is a DISGRACE! And Oxfordshire PCT should be held fully accountable for the lives that their policies may ruin.

It is true that Oxfordshire gets a smaller health budget then many other counties and YES this is wrong but, let's remember that they don't always spend all of this budget direct on our healthcare. Remember that Oxfordshire PCT is sitting on a forecast surplus of £2 million, money that could go directly into healthcare.

One group of people who gets discriminated against in Oxfordshire are couples that suffer from infertility issues. In 2004 the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) stated very clearly that couples who were aged 23-39 years that have an indentified cause of infertility or who have been infertile for 3 years should be offered 3 cycles of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), funded by the NHS.

Oxfordshire PCT's current policies state that the following criteria needs to be fulfilled to receive funding for IVF treatment in Oxfordshire;

All couples and individuals must meet the following criteria to be eligible for treatment:

• The woman must be aged between 35 and 38 inclusive, and must be neither overweight nor underweight (Body Mass Index between 19 and 30)


• Both the man and woman must be non-smokers

Couples and individuals who are not eligible for treatment:

• If the man and the woman have had a child together (including an adopted child) OR if either of them has had a child in a previous relationship, (including an adopted child), they are not eligible for treatment


• To fertile women who are in a same sex partnership, or fertile women who are single


• If the woman has previously had NHS or privately-funded fertility treatment (IVF and ICSI), they are not eligible for treatment.

As you can see, these polices discriminate against infertile couples between the age of 23-34, people that are in a same sex relationship and people who have had children in other relationships.

Let's look at each of these areas carefully.

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