Fertility expert calls for Jersey IVF unit and egg freezing

Friday 05 February 2021

Jersey should have its own IVF unit and offer egg freezing services to help local couples and fire up health tourism, the doctor behind a major review of the current fertility services has said.

Dr Enda McVeigh, a Professor of Reproductive Medicine at the University of Oxford, recently conducted an in-depth assessment of Jersey’s Assisted Reproduction Unit (ARU).

It comes after the departure of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G) consultant, Neil MacLachlan, who had led the service for over 30 years.

Following the review, the Government has announced a number of changes to the unit, which will now be moving to a nurse-led service, with a new O&G consultant with an interest in fertility to be appointed soon.

Pictured: The Jersey's Assisted Reproduction Unit (ARU) will be now led by Sue Lowbridge, a Registered General Nurse and Midwife.

The service will be led by Sue Lowbridge, a Registered General Nurse and Midwife who has been working as a fertility nurse since 1996.

Her duties will largely revolve around coordinating the patient’s fertility treatment and providing the support and encouragement needed to achieve a successful pregnancy.

Dr McVeigh, who agreed to carry out “caretaking” work for the unit for a few months, told Express that the changes, which will also include a new IT system platform where couples will have access to their notes, test results as well as their prescriptions, will improve the service and “not in any way decrease it”.

“The service is good but it’s going to get a lot better,” he said. 

“The innovation and thought process that are put into it is thought through and deep, it won't just be business as usual, they want it to be better, that’s why they took the time to assess.”

Pictured: Infertility treatment involves a multidisciplinary team.

He added that supporting a couple through infertility treatment involves “clear pathways and protocols that are evidence based” carried out by a multidisciplinary teams. “You need psychological support, you need medical support, you need nursing support, it’s always a team effort,” he said. 

A nurse-led ARU, he claimed, will function in the same way as antenatal care which is predominantly offered by midwives. “Midwives look after normal pregnancies but, when during the screening, you identify a high-risk pregnancy, a consultant becomes involved. It’s not a doctors’ ‘no-go zone’… It will be nurse led with having recourse to senior people.

“It allows the targeting of resources.”

Dr McVeigh said in the future, couples will be given a much wider choice of IVF clinics to go to for their treatment. They will continue to be given a ‘cost and treatment plan’ that sets out the treatment they need, which is transmitted to the clinic, to avoid “vulnerable couples” being manipulated and exploited into paying for tests that are not necessary.

“There are currently one or two IVF clinics being used and they are quite expensive,” he said. “There are others who are equally as good, if not better, and not as expensive. 

“We want to introduce that element of choice. The ambition is that the patient is in control of the journey, it is not a paternalistic system where we say ‘we know better’.”

Pictured: Dr McVeigh said couples will be able to choose which clinic they go to for IVF.

He described the gap between Dr MacLachlan’s departure and the arrival of a new consultant as an opportunity to “stabilise, assess and improve”. 

“I see it as an opportunity,” he said. “You do not want to continue doing what you were doing the last time. If you do a handover, you can handover good habits as well as bad habits.

“Neil has done a great job but he had been there for years. Others have been working in bigger trusts and there’s an opportunity to bring those in and develop the system.

“One of the big faults in the NHS and in Jersey as well is that once you appoint someone, there are here for 20 or 30 years, it does not happen in any other profession. It’s not healthy, every now and then you need to reshape the system. 

“The easiest thing for them would have been to appoint someone just to have someone in the post but that was not necessarily the best. They have taken the time to reassess how can we make the service better and what do we need.” 

In the longer term, Dr McVeigh also has a bigger vision for Jersey’s ARU.

“If I had a wish or a magic wand, and actually I want to look at this with the team, Jersey would be having its own IVF unit,” he said.

Pictured: "Why not make Jersey an island for health tourism?”

Dr McVeigh is part of the Future Fertility Trust, which offers tissue cryopreservation to young people at risk of infertility, including those diagnosed with cancer who are at risk of becoming infertile as a result of chemotherapy. 

With the number of local patients who leave the island every day for cancer treatments, Dr McVeigh says the unit could not only prove beneficial to islanders who are infertile but also cancer patients. 

The unit could also offer egg freezing, a service which is seeing a sharp increase in the UK with more and more women in their mid-20s opting for it as “a safety net”. 

“All those services are available on Jersey’s doorstep already,” Dr Mc Veigh said. “Jersey is well-known for ethically managing its FinTech and finance sector, why not make it an island for health tourism?”