To celebrate National Fertility Awareness Week (#NFAWUK), the UK’s dedicated, independent fertility regulator can officially reveal that the number of children born from IVF and other assisted reproductive treatments has now passed a quarter of a million.
Using data drawn from the HFA ‘register’ - the largest repository of data on assisted reproduction treatments in the world – we know that the 250,000th IVF baby was born in February 2015. The data also shows the vast rise in the number of treatments in the 25 years since the HFEA was established.
In 1991, 6,146 women received 6,609 IVF treatments, resulting in 1,226 live births. By 2013 this had risen to 52,288 women receiving 67,708 cycles of IVF treatment, from which 15,283 babies were born. Since 1991, the live birth rate for IVF has increased from around 14% in 1991, to 26.5% in 2014.
Regional treatment:
Register data also shows that there are substantially more women having treatment in London than anywhere else in the UK, with the fewest number of treatments taking place in Northern Ireland. This is largely proportionate to the number of clinics in each area, with London and the South East hosting 50 of the UK’s 122 licensed clinics.
