The 47th anniversary of the birth of Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first baby conceived through in vitro fertilisation, falls on 25 July 2025. Brown was delivered by caesarean section shortly before midnight on 25 July 1978 at Oldham General Hospital in Greater Manchester, weighing approximately 2.6 kilograms, according to reports from Prothom Alo and Khabar Online. Her mother, Lesley Brown, had blocked fallopian tubes and had undergone the then-experimental procedure in November 1977, in which an egg was fertilised with her husband’s sperm in a laboratory dish and the resulting embryo transferred to her uterus. The birth, overseen by gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards, sparked global media attention and raised legal and ethical questions, with some religious groups characterising the technique as interference with natural procreation, Prothom Alo notes.

Nearly five decades later, access to IVF in the country where the technique was pioneered is described as “grossly unfair” by Sarah Norcross, director of the Progress Educational Trust, a charity that works on fertility choices. In an article published by The Independent on World IVF Day, Norcross said that eligibility and the number of funded cycles vary arbitrarily between NHS integrated care boards in England. In the past year alone, five ICBs have reduced their IVF offering: NHS Greater Manchester cut cycles from up to three to one from 1 April 2026; NHS Cheshire and Merseyside moved to a single funded cycle from 1 February 2026; and NHS South Yorkshire reduced cycles from two to one in December 2025. The Independent quotes Gwenda Burns, chief executive of the Fertility Alliance, stating that “whether you can access treatment, what provision you’ll receive and under what conditions is fundamentally inequitable.”

Safety remains a parallel concern. Writing in The Hindu, specialists note that ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome is a major complication of IVF, with an estimated 2–8% of cycles resulting in moderate OHSS and approximately 0.1% in severe cases, which can lead to renal, liver or respiratory failure. The article describes a “segmentation” approach to reduce risk: using a GnRH antagonist protocol for ovarian stimulation, a GnRH agonist to trigger final egg maturation, and a freeze-all strategy to transfer embryos in a later cycle. The aim, the article states, is for clinics to become “OHSS free.”

Louise Brown’s own later history has helped allay early fears about the technique. According to Khabar Online, her sister Natalie, also conceived through IVF, was born in 1999 and later gave birth to a child conceived naturally, becoming the first IVF baby to do so. Louise Brown herself gave birth to a son, Cameron, in 2006, also conceived naturally. Brown now works as an ambassador at Bourn Hall IVF Clinic, the clinic founded by Steptoe, Edwards and embryologist Jean Purdy, and published an autobiography in 2015. Edwards received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010; Steptoe and Purdy, who died in 1988 and 1985 respectively, were not eligible for the prize, which is not awarded posthumously, Prothom Alo reports. No further policy decisions on NHS IVF provision have been announced beyond the cuts already implemented.