The use of IVF and donor eggs have led to a more than 50 percent increase in women in their fifties giving birth in the UK, figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics have revealed.
In 2009, more than 100 UK women aged 50-plus gave birth — a 55 percent increase from 2008, despite the National Health Service not providing IVF funding assistance to women older than 39 years of age.
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Since 2006 the London Bridge Centre — a fertility clinic specialising in IVF treatment — in conjunction with its partner clinic in Kiev has treated 30 women aged over 50, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported.
Each of these women was impregnated with an egg donated by a Ukrainian woman, and 15 have given birth while one has a baby on the way.
The clinic is also treating three women in their fifties who have donor eggs from the US, two of whom are pregnant. The Bridge only provides IVF for women in their fifties if they have a donor egg from overseas.
Between the ages of 20 and 40 a woman’s chance of falling pregnant each month goes from 20 percent to just 5 percent, the Australian Infertility Support Group website states.
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