The Fertility Centre in Auburn Street is the sixth of its kind in Australia, offering discounted pricing to improve access to in-vitro fertilisation for couples living in lower socio-economic areas.

Illawarra fertility specialist and obstetrician Dr David Greening is leading the new centre, which is backed by IVF Australia, and said the response had been ‘‘almost universally favourable’’.

Demand is strong, with more than 30 women already taking advantage of the centre’s services – and appointments are booked out for at least the next month.

‘‘Economics drives infertility – traditionally the number of people accessing fertility treatment has been governed by their ability to pay the high price for it,’’ Dr Greening said.

‘‘There’s a definite trend worldwide towards reducing prices to make IVF more available – in Scandinavian countries where there is free IVF there’s around three kids per classroom conceived via IVF, compared to one per classroom in Australia and 0.3 per class in the US.

‘‘As a fertility specialist, I’ve lost so many people to clinics in Sydney and it was about time we changed our economic modelling in this region.’’

Dr Greening said he was hoping to achieve the same pregnancy rates at the Wollongong clinic as at its sister clinic in Liverpool, where success rates for women under 38 years old sit around 49per cent.

 ‘‘That’s almost a 50/50 chance of falling pregnant,’’ he said.

For nurse Sandra Kennedy – who sees women from the first consultation, through egg collection and embryo transfer to the pregnancy test – that makes the job a whole lot more enjoyable.

‘‘I’ve been in this industry for 15 years and at the start the success rate was around one in 10; now one out of two are falling pregnant, which is really nice and I enjoy giving them the good news,’’ she said.

‘‘At Wollongong we’ve already had one woman who had her egg collection two weeks ago, whose pregnancy test came back positive today.’’

The Wollongong clinic offers IVF at $3200 per cycle, and with the $1000 Medicare rebate couples are out of pocket $2200 – about half the traditional price.

The discount means it does not have the full complement of services on site and there are some restrictions. 

That is, women have to have a BMI of less than 35; be aged 44 or under; and donor eggs or sperm are not available.

Egg collection is done with ‘‘specialised pain control’’ instead of under general anaesthetic, but Dr Greening said the process was quicker (about seven minutes) and fairly painless due to less stimulation of the ovaries.

Those Illawarra women requiring enhanced fertility services could access those through IVF Australia’s network, while undergoing some of the consultations at the local clinic.

‘‘I’d say 80per cent or more of women fit into the Fertility Clinic model,’’ Dr Greening said. 

‘‘And we do have the capacity here to do extra things like fertility preservation – egg or sperm freezing.’’