Croydon CCG stops funding IVF treatment to save £800 000 a year

Campaigners fear that a hospital fertility centre could close after NHS commissioners in Croydon became the first in London to stop routine funding of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.

The NHS Croydon clinical commissioning group (CCG) said that it had taken the decision to help save over £800 000 a year, although 77% of people who responded to its consultation had opposed the closure. Agnelo Fernandes, a Croydon GP and the CCG’s assistant clinical chair, said, “This is one of the hardest decisions of my professional career, and I wish we were not in the position of having to make it.”

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust said that the future of the service at Croydon University Hospital was now “uncertain,” as the CCG was …