YORK is to get its first NHS fertility clinic, meaning patients struggling to have a baby will no longer need to travel over to Leeds or Hull for treatment.

Michelle Phillips, Chief nurse and Director of Clinical Performance & Assurance at primary care services provider Nimbuscare, has revealed that the new NHS fertility service will be opening at the Acomb Community Care Centre.

"The first consultations for York people needing NHS fertility support will be held in August and people will be referred by their GP," she said, writing in a weekly Nimbuscare column for The Press.

"This will help those people who have previously had to travel to Leeds or Hull for IVF investigations or other fertility support.

"This is great news for York people and will also be an opportunity for our teams to learn about this important service.

"We will provide more information about this exciting new service later this week."

The news comes only three months after The Press revealed that York was to get its first private IVF clinic, to help women from the area who were struggling to have a family.

A spokesperson said then that it would be based at the Yorkshire Sports Medicine (YSM) premises at David Lloyd gym on the eastern side of the city, as a satellite clinic of the Hull and East Riding Fertility Clinic at Hesslewood, near Hull.

They said it would be offering initial appointments, insemination procedures, the use of donor eggs and donor sperm, as well as the more advanced reproductive technologies such as testing for genetic abnormalities on embryos before the final stages of IVF treatment.

“If embryos are tested before they are used, then it saves potential heartbreak further into a pregnancy, as abnormal embryos are likely to end in miscarriage,” they said.

They said the clinic would be open for both private and NHS patients and would mean quicker referral times for women to get appointments and be seen by a doctor than were currently offered on the NHS.

Meanwhile, Michelle Phillips has spoken out in her column about GP Practices being in the news again due to the length of time people were having to wait for a routine appointment.

She said it was 'incredibly difficult' for everyone working within General Practice to hear the frustrations of local people.

She said: "Every GP practice in the country is dealing with the same issues – high demand, increasing staff sickness and shortage of both clinical and non-clinical staff. In addition, we’re now entering the peak holiday period and still have high levels of Covid in our communities.

"As a community, York has been doing all it can to urge more to be done to invest in the future of General Practice."