Thousands of Irish couples will no longer need to travel to Spain for IVF treatment

Thousands of Irish couples will no longer need to travel to Spain for IVF treatment.

A new programme will mean that many Irish patients choosing to undergo IVF will no longer have to travel for treatment using anonymous donated eggs. Fertility centre, Institut Marquès, is one of the first to allow people to remotely carry out In Vitro fertilisation with donor eggs. The programme will mean the embryos will be the ones travelling to potential mothers in countries such as Italy and Ireland. As it stands, almost half of IVF treatments carried out in Europe are carried out in Spain. This kind of treatment isn't possible in a lot of countries either due to a lack of donors or the country's laws. However, it is legal in Spain, meaning that many couples often travel abroad for "cross border reproductive treatment." This new programme will allow patients to carry out IVF remotely. The Institut Marquès will receive a frozen sperm sample from the male member of the couple and begin the fertilisation process. The created embryos will then take a journey across Europe to be reunited with their ‘future parents.' The results of this programme see a pregnancy rate of 64.6 percent by embryo transfer, with a live born baby rate of 52 percent. The miscarriage rate is 12.6 percent and the multiple pregnancy rate has dropped to 0.9 percent. Director of Institut Marquès, Dr Marisa López- Teijón, has called the results "amazing." She said:

“These are amazing results, the outcome of many years of experience. "They are due both to the good rates we get with IVF, as well as to the use of the latest technologies that allow us to safely vitrify the embryos and send them to the patient’s country of origin so that she does not need to travel."

Patients in the UK will not be able to benefit from this programme due to Britain's egg donation laws.