Advocates call P.E.I. ‘fertility clinic desert,’ push for expanded services

Prince Edward Island’s Charlottetown is pictured in this file photo.

A Prince Edward Island couple trying to get pregnant could have to leave the province multiple times to access fertility services.

Dr. Tracy Malone, a former Islander who co-founded Conceive Health in Toronto, said the constant long-distance travel can add undue stress on potential parents.

“They might have to travel four or five times a week to access bloodwork or ultrasounds,” she said. “Realistically, that should be done on the Island. Then they only travel when they need to.

“It causes so many hurdles just to get to the start line. The amount of stress on the patient is astronomical.”

Malone and Carolynn Dubé, executive director for Fertility Matters Canada, are calling for expanded fertility services on the Island. They made a presentation for the Standing Committee on Health and Social Development on Jan. 23, when they labelled P.E.I. a “fertility clinic desert.”

They noted P.E.I. is the only province in Canada without a fertility clinic.

“I go back and forth (between P.E.I. and Ontario) all the time,” Malone said. “It became increasingly obvious there was a huge disparity between the two provinces. In the East Coast, we have basically one clinic that’s servicing four provinces.”

Malone and Dubé said a full in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic might not been feasible for P.E.I. given the high cost and the size of the province’s population, but they are hopeful a hub for other fertility services could help patients before they have to head off the Island.

“We are advocating for on-Island access to certain fertility or reproductive health testing and experts to help patients,” Dubé said. “We’d love to see it as a central hub where a patient could come and access testing, ultrasonography and potentially get some types of fertility treatment.

“Not all people who need access to fertility care need IVF, which is very expensive and time consuming. If an Islander needed to travel to Moncton or Toronto for IVF, when you’re in an active treatment cycle, there are quite a few appointments. You don’t know when you need to go in. If you had the option for patients to access in P.E.I., it would decrease disruptions.”

Malone noted P.E.I. previously had a fertility clinic, but it closed in 2014 and nothing has replaced it since.

“The population doesn’t equate with a functional model for a full-blown IVF clinic,” she said. “It’d be underutilized because we don’t have that population.

“What we typically do is we would have satellite clinics, assessment and monitoring clinics in more rural areas to provide greater reach into those fertility deserts. Patients can access blood tests, ultrasounds, medical interpretations and assessments, then they could be referred to an IVF clinic off-Island.”

In their presentation, Malone and Dubé noted the cost of IVF is $10,000 to $20,000 per cycle. P.E.I. offers up to $10,000 reimbursement per year for eligible fertility expenses, but travel costs and initial assessments with reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) specialists.

Along with a central hub, Malone and Dubé are calling for updates to the fertility funding programming, including increasing the minimum reimbursement to $20,000 per cycle and removing income-based restrictions.

According to the presentation, P.E.I., which currently has a population of roughly 182,000, saw an ultra-low fertility rate of 1.10 births per woman in 2024.

“Fertility rates are intimately tied to economic health,” Dubé said. “A ton of data shows low birth rates lead to poor economic outcomes for jurisdictions.

“This is an awesome opportunity to attract and retain Islanders. We’ve seen Canadians move from one province to another because fertility access is better.”

Malone said she is optimistic a fertility clinic could open in P.E.I. in the near future.

“All the parties are so interested,” she said. “It’s an area of medicine that is a little bit layered in that it takes coordination, but it’s totally within reach to open a clinic within the next calendar year.”

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