LOVE Island’s Amy Hart tried not to cry today as she spoke about her fertility battle on Good Morning Britain.
The 29-year-old started the egg freezing process last year after finding out her AMH level (fertility span) was “quite low”.
Amy told GMB today of her shock when a test costing £400 told her she needed more treatment.
She said: “When I first met the professor he said ‘we’re not going to freeze your eggs if we don’t need to, let’s do the fertility MOT and see what the results say.’
“So I had the fertility MOT and went back, didn’t expect him to say, ‘yes, so we’re going to freeze your eggs’ because my AMH was 8 which I thought was out of 10 which it’s not, it’s between 6 and 20. That’s your egg reserve.”
Amy then embarked on two failed rounds of egg extraction before a third successful attempt.
Amy looked emotional while adding to hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls: “So for someone my age it should be anywhere between six and 20, I was at eight, and I’m not at six. So I have about four years left of fertility.”
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She’s already spent £10k on freezing her eggs, and because of her new medication, the total cost has totalled to £14k.
The TV favourite said the cost was too high for many women struggling with fertility and called for there to be more support in the NHS.
She said: “I think there should be a lot more support, I know there are certain supermarkets who won’t put any mark up on the drugs, because my second prescription was £2,500.
“But that’s because there are markups on that whereas certain supermarkets don’t put any mark-ups on it. And there should be support with certain conditions, and with IVF it is a bit of a postcode lottery, and same sex couples and women doing it on their own, there needs to be a lot more support around fertility.”
Currently the NHS will pay for women with cancer to have their eggs frozen, with GMB Doctor Hilary Jones adding: “You’re talking about a huge number of women and the cost of the treatment for freezing eggs.
“The process is about £3350 and on top of that you’ve got the drug treatments another £1500 and then storage of the eggs is another£350 per year.”
“So if you were to provide this service on the NHS for all women who were worried about their fertility you would bankrupt the NHS. It’s as simple as that.”
