The Yanks are coming!
UK’S BIGGEST SPERM BANK WILL USE DONORS FROM AMERICA
MANCHESTER will soon be home to the country’s biggest sperm bank – with more than 100 of the best and brightest US donors to choose from.
Patients at St Mary’s Hospital will be able to search online for their perfect donor from across the pond, selecting characteristics such as hair colour, height and ethnicity.
They will also be able to select a donor based on their favourite pet, hobbies and even their star sign.
Students and successful professionals go through rigorous health and suitability checks before being signed up with Virginia-based Fairfax Cryobank.
Every donor has an online profile for people to browse – and some have pictures from their childhood and as adults. Audio interviews are also sometimes available. Bosses at St Mary’s, part of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, say the partnership with the US company will offer people wanting to start a family more choice.
The process will be much quicker for private and NHS patients, they add.
The hospital has been working with Fairfax Cryobank for a number of years, but shipping sperm over in monthly batches was proving impractical and costly. Specimens from more than 100 donors will now be stored at the hospital. Gregory Horne, director of laboratory services with the hospital’s assisted reproductive treatment team, said: “Patients were having to wait until the end of the month before we could order. It was costly too, so we thought why not just store it over here?
“It’s all about choice. Each donor has the potential to create 10 families.
“To be able to choose from 100 donors in the UK, patients would have to search four or five different websites.
“With this, our patients work with a donor co-ordinator who explains how everything works, then checks over the search form before they submit it.
“It makes the process as personal as can be, and there’s a lot more information available on each donor.”
Fairfax Cryobank contacts donors every two years to check they’re in good health. Any issues which could affect children are then relayed to families. Same-sex couples and single women undergoing IVF or other fertility treatment will be able to access the bank – as well as heterosexual couples receiving NHS fertility treatment and requiring donor sperm.
Donors must comply with Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulations around screening, confidentiality and traceability, and be aged between 18 and 39 and have no significant health risk factors.
UK laws which enable people to request the identity of their donor when they turn 18 also apply. Fairfax Cryobank director Stephen Pool added: “We are committed to helping to assist our clients build healthy families. Our partnership with St Mary’s will allow those clients in the UK and Ireland easy access to HFEA compliant donor sperm with state of the art infectious and genetic screening to reduce the risk of disease transmission. Having worked with the professionals at St Mary’s for over 18 months further solidifies our confidence in this partnership to be able to help patients needing donor sperm to create healthy families.”
Each donor has the potential to create 10 families Gregory Horne