IVF blunder gives parents doubt about father

"We consider that it is an isolated incident, but it is terrible for the couples who find this out. It's a phone call you do not want to get from the hospital." Freya, an organisation that supports people with fertility problems

NETHERLANDS: As many as 13 women may have become pregnant with sperm from the wrong father at a Dutch hospital where staff made mistakes in the in vitro fertilisation process.

In all, 26 embryos were created with sperm cells implanted by an instrument that had not been fully cleansed from a previous application, the University Medical Centre (UMC) teaching hospital at Utrecht admitted yesterday.

‘‘During fertilisation, sperm cells from one treatment couple may have ended up with the egg cells of 26 other couples,’’ hospital officials said.

‘‘There is a chance that the egg cells have been fertilised by sperm other than that of the intended father,’’ they said. Of the 26 couples, 13 women have given birth or are pregnant as a result of the treatment, carried out between April last year and last month.

The other embryos remain frozen.

The UMC blamed a procedural error and said that the chance of the wrong sperm being responsible for the conceptions remained very small but ‘‘could not be excluded’’.

The procedure was stopped as soon as the error was discovered.

The hospital is offering DNA testing if the couples want to confirm paternity.

Those with frozen embryos may wish not to have them implanted, the statement said.

‘‘The UMC’S board regrets that the couples involved had to receive this news and will do everything within its powers to give clarity on the issue as soon as possible,’’ it said.

The mixup may also have affected patients from the St Antonius Hospital in Utrecht and a fertility centre in Nieuwegein, south of Utrecht, Dutch media reported.

Freya, an organisation that supports people with fertility problems, voiced alarm over the error.

‘‘People need to have 100 per cent confidence in the process,’’ a spokesman said.

‘‘We consider that it is an isolated incident, but it is terrible for the couples who find this out. It’s a phone call you do not want to get from the hospital.’’

Mishaps in IVF are rare. In 2012, a mother in Singapore sued a clinic after it mixed up her husband’s sperm with that of a stranger.

The ethnic Chinese woman suspected something was amiss because her baby, born in 2010, bore none of the skin toning or hair colour of her Caucasian husband.

In Britain fewer than one in 100 IVF treatment cycles suffer an ‘‘adverse incident’’, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

These vary from implantation of the wrong sperm or patient deaths to the loss of embryos or eggs rendered unusable.

- The Times