A COUPLE who were refused fertility treatment on the NHS and told to seek private healthcare have won their battle for funding to try for a baby.

Mrs Amanda Elliot, 23 and her husband Ross, 26, were told in December they would not be able to have fertility treatment on the NHS as funding for it had stopped three years ago. This was despite a letter sent to them only months earlier telling them they would be put on the waiting list for treatment.

Their story was highlighted on the front page of the St Albans and Harpenden Observers last month. Now the West Herts NHS trust has made another u-turn and agreed to go through with the treatment almost exactly a year after its original offer. Mrs Elliot said: "I am very happy that we have been sent a letter saying they will go through with it, but it was a long wait and I don't want to get my hopes up to much. I went out and celebrated last time I was told and then look what happened."

The hospital has not set a date for when the treatment will begin, but has given Mrs Elliot a date for an appointment to see a consultant.

The couple from Wright Close, Wheathampstead, have been trying for a baby for almost four years. Two years ago Mrs Elliot was diagnosed with having unexplained infertility a problem that affects two per cent of the population and means she could not have a child by conventional methods. A consultant at St Albans City Hospital recommended the couple for IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination) fertility treatment. After months of waiting they were told the hospital would not go through with the offer. Mrs Elliot said she felt two years had been wasted. On seeking an explanation for the decision she was told that the St Albans and Harpenden Primary Care Trust (PCT) had stopped funding fertility treatment in 2000 and she should never have been offered the treatment in the first place.

However, it has since emerged that a scanning machine at the hospital, used in the IUI treatment process, has not been working for nine months.

A spokesman for the West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust said: "There was a problem with the scanner used in the treatment for IUI, but that has been rectified and we hope to have it up and running in the next few days. The trust will be providing IUI to all those patients who are currently waiting for this treatment in agreement with the PCTs. All subsequent patients who are identified as potentially benefiting from IUI will be referred back to their PCT for approval prior to treatment being provided."

May 15, 2003 12:00