Arbitrary NHS rules stop help for tragically infertile woman

A woman who went through the menopause in her teens has been refused fertility treatment on the NHS.

Catherine Storey was left infertile at 18 when she had a premature menopause. She is now 20 but has been refused IVF on the NHS because her boyfriend Martin Sear already has children - even though they live 300 miles away.

The couple took out a bank loan and travelled to a clinic in Barcelona. But after spending 13,000 pounds on two rounds of IVF, Miss Storey, an administrative assistant with a fire alarms company from Cramlington, Northumberland, is still not pregnant and has run out of money.

She said: "If I had fallen in love with a different man or lived in a different part of the country I could have been able to have IVF for free."

A Newcastle Primary Care Trust spokesman said: "The local NHS policy says to have access to IVF treatment, couples must have no other living children in this or any previous relationship for either partner, have had a minimum of three years unexplained infertility and no history of failed sterilisation reversal in either male or female partner."

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