THE headlines were stark: “Staff warning on baby care units”. They were prompted by a crisis in special units for newborn babies which, says a study by the baby charity Bliss, are further than ever from recommended staffing levels.

The study found that, on average, units are understaffed by a third. Only in two thirds of units offering intensive care, where one nurse to one baby is recommended, were there enough staff. There are only two options: find £75 million to fund these units properly, or reduce the number of babies needing intensive care.

That number is 80,000 a year, and demand has risen dramatically, partly because medical advances mean that more can be done to help very ill babies, but also because of the huge rise in the number of multiple births.

About 50 per cent of twins need special care at birth. In 1975 there were 6,000 twins born annually. Now the figure is 10,000. This rise is caused almost entirely by IVF. A quarter of IVF pregnancies result in multiple births, ten times the natural rate, largely because clinics implant more than one embryo to increase success rates.

When, in 2002, Baroness Deech, the former chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), suggested that private IVF units should be forced to take out insurance that would meet the costs of caring for twins and triplets in NHS intensive care facilities, she was howled down. After all, she was told, parents had paid for the NHS like everyone else. We don’t deny those with private health insurance access to NHS care if they need it, do we?

But Baroness Deech had a point. Assisted reproduction combines desperate parents with private clinics whose fortunes depend on success rates, and that means implanting multiple embryos and more multiple births. This results in more babies needing NHS special care and fewer staff to go around. If the staff to baby ratio were higher, lives could be saved. A recent study indicated that if each baby in specialist care received one-to-one treatment, the incidence of deaths could be cut by 48 per cent.

It is not a question of restricting IVF itself, but reducing the number of multiple births. The HFEA is consulting about a single embryo implant policy. There is predictable opposition from some clinics, but it surely can’t be right that IVF should endanger not only the babies it brings into the world but also those conceived naturally because of its disproportionate impact on special care resources.

Making clinics pay for insurance would be a clear way to focus their minds on producing one life at a time.

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