The Assuta Hospital in Tel Aviv is one of the busiest IVF clinics in the world, with 7,000 cycles each year.
The Assuta Hospital in
Tel Aviv is one of the busiest IVF clinics in the world, with 7,000 cycles
each year. Unlike countries where couples go broke trying to conceive with
assisted reproductive technology, Israel provides free, unlimited IVF
procedures for up to two “take-home babies” until a woman is 45. The policy has
made Israelis the highest per capita users of the procedure in the world. While
IVF is one of the country’s largest public health expenditures, it has
attracted little debate or criticism. IVF seems to be one of the few issues
that fractious Israelis seem to agree on.

Israelis
already have a high fertility rate: an average of 2.9 children per family. A
survey published in 2002 by the journal Human Reproduction Update showed that
1,657 IVF procedures per million people per year were performed in Israel,
compared with 899 in Iceland, the country with the second highest rate, and 126
in the US, which came in far behind European countries. Experts say Israel’s
rate still outstrips the rest of the world by far. IVF produces 4% of Israeli
children today, compared with 1% in the US. Assuta performs about a quarter of
Israel’s approximately 28,000 IVF procedures per year. ~ New York Times,
Jul 17

Israel leads the world in IVF
Jared Yee
Israel
IVF