IVF: A month after every new treatment stopped at Neath Port Talbot Hospital, couples are getting a restart date

New IVF treatments will restart at Neath Port Talbot Hospital from Tuesday 22 September, four weeks after they were paused.

Swansea Bay University Health Board says the Wales Fertility Institute will resume the service in a phased way from that date, and will contact patients directly about the next steps in their treatment.

New treatments were paused on 28 August because absence in key areas of the institute’s workforce left the centre unable to meet the regulatory requirements needed to start them, the health board said at the time.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the licensing body, asked the board to continue existing treatments but pause new ones while those requirements could not be met. The board stressed there were no safety concerns: “There are no safety related issues, the issues are regulatory.”

The pause hit hardest for those with agreed treatment plans who had not yet started, something the board acknowledged in August would be “particularly upsetting”.

Patients already in active treatment were unaffected throughout, and the board said there was no impact on gametes and embryos in storage.

Announcing the restart, the institute said: “We’ve been working hard to resolve the workforce challenges we were experiencing and are now preparing a plan that will see us resuming the service in a phased way from Tuesday 22 September.

“We will be in touch with patients to advise on the next steps of their treatment. We recognise how concerning this pause may have been for patients.

“We’d like to thank those affected by the delay for bearing with us and once again would like to reiterate that we are sorry for the upset and anguish the delay will have caused.”

The apology echoes August’s, when the board said it was “very sorry” and doing everything it could to resolve the situation.

The fertility pause has also run alongside a far deeper crisis in the board’s care for women and families. Its maternity services have been through a year of repeated scrutiny, including an independent review that found “repeated failures in the quality of care and governance” and escalated Welsh Government intervention.

In June the board apologised again to families who suffered “devastating and lifechanging outcomes” in its maternity care, with a Scottish health leader brought in to scrutinise its overhaul and a Wales-wide review of maternity and neonatal services under way. Our maternity coverage follows the full story.

At the time of the fertility pause, the board was also liaising with the all-Wales NHS Joint Commissioning Committee, which commissions the service, about alternative options if it ran beyond the short term.

The four-week timeline it hoped for has held: the pause began on 28 August, and the phased restart comes 25 days later.

The institute has offered appointments with its counselling team for patients who would find it helpful to talk, and queries can go to the senior team at enquiries.wfi@wales.nhs.uk.

Patients do not need to do anything to restart their treatment: the institute says it will make contact directly as the phased resumption begins.

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.