‘Life-altering investment’: $1.5 million in funding for IVF treatments for Windsor families
Victory Reproductive Care (VCR) Clinic is receiving a minimum of $1.5 million in annual funding from the Ontario government to support reproductive therapies in Windsor.
“To families in our region in need of services, this is a life-altering investment,” says Dr. Rahi Victory, infertility specialist at VCR.
In 2015, Ontario expanded access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) services for Ontarians with infertility but no funding was provided to clinics in Windsor-Essex.
As a result, patients in Windsor-Essex had to either pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket to access IVF services closer to home or make multiple trips to the GTA or London to receive care.
The $1.5 million in funding will cover IVF treatments for 135 local families. The province covers one cycle of IVF per eligible patient per lifetime.
“Overall, you're saving about $11,000 compared to what you would pay privately,” said Dr. Victory.
Ontario’s Health Minister Sylvia Jones says, “it’s not so much about the money, it’s the fact that families who want to build a family in their community can do that here.”
Stacey Tobin shows photos of her daughter in Windsor, Ont. on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. (Sijia Liu/CTV News Windsor) For Stacey Tobin, founder of peer support group, Fertility Friends, the investment has been a “long time coming.”
“Those of us that have already went through it (IVF) would have wished it was here years ago but nevertheless there are people who can now benefit from it,” said Tobin.
She conceived her daughter using IVF in 2018. At the time, she had to frequently travel to Toronto in order to receive government-funded care.
“There were many days when we would have to travel to Toronto for a basic appointment that would only take maybe 15 minutes. It made things very stressful,” she recalled.
Women in Windsor-Essex in need of extra support during their IVF journey are encouraged to join Fertility Friend’s Facebook group.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
For the first time in report's history, Canada's air quality worse than U.S.
Thanks to wildfires, air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report.
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
DEVELOPING Canada's annual inflation rate ticked down to 2.8 per cent in February, defying expectations
Statistics Canada says the annual inflation rate edged down to 2.8 per cent in February.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.
Demand soars for solar eclipse glasses in Canada. Are they worth buying?
The demand for total solar eclipse glasses used to safely view the rare celestial event has been ramping up as sellers, along with astronomy and eye-care experts in Canada, warn that viewing the eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous.
Trump says Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and their religion
Former U.S. president Donald Trump on Monday charged that Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and hate 'their religion,' igniting a firestorm of criticism from the White House and Jewish leaders.
Toronto family doctor who called patient's body 'perfect' suspended for 3 months: tribunal
A family doctor in Toronto has been suspended for three months after a disciplinary tribunal found that he failed to follow proper protocols while examining a patient's breasts and made inappropriate comments about her body.