Poland to end state funding for IVF treatment

Thanas · Post by **Thanas** » 2015-12-02 08:19pm

Poland to end state funding for IVF treatment

Poland’s new socially conservative government has said it is planning to end state funding for IVF treatment just two years after it was introduced, claiming it is too expensive.

Most countries in the European Union have some sort of state programme to fund IVF for infertile couples. Only this year, Poland passed legislation regulating the procedure, the last EU state to do so. It had been available for years but state funding was only introduced in 2013.

Teachings of the Catholic church, which wields considerable influence in Poland and has close links with the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), say IVF is sinful and prohibit it.

“We are only talking about [ending] the programme financed by the state, using hundreds of millions of zlotys, which we cannot afford,” the health minister, Konstanty Radziwiłł, was quoted as saying by local media.

The state programme, implemented by the former centrist government of the Civic Platform party, has so far led to the births of more than 3,000 children, with about 17,000 couples currently undergoing treatment.

It has cost about 110m zlotys (£18m) so far and was extended by the former government to last until the end of 2019 at an expected cost of about 300m zlotys.

PiS, which won the Polish general election in October, plans to sharply raise public spending, including on programmes such as a new family benefit of 500 zlotys per child at an annual cost of 16bn zlotys.

Poland’s Roman Catholic clergy say freezing of embryos, which is often done during the IVF process, amounts to freezing of human beings, a claim rejected by the World Health Organisation.

Archbishop Andrzej Dzięga, addressing thousands of Catholics in July, said IVF rules in Poland were criminal. “You have prepared a criminal law, because it deprives a human being of humanity – a living, conceived human being,” he said.

Poland has one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU, which means that, barring a change in the number of children being born, the country will face a sharp decline in population and increasing costs of caring for elderly people.

The creator of in vitro fertilisation therapy, Robert Geoffrey Edwards, was awarded a Nobel prize in 2010.

Potatoes in charge results in stupidity. Who knew.