The Hindu : New Delhi News : Guidelines laid down for assisted reproductive technology

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 17, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Guidelines laid down for assisted reproductive technology

By Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI, FEB. 16. Nineteen years after India's first scientifically documented IVF baby was born in Mumbai through the support of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the country is finally ready to "net the multi-billion open infertility clinic market".

Late last month, ICMR submitted the country's first national guidelines for accreditation, supervision and regulation of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

These important guidelines will now form the foundation of any legislation to be introduced by the Government and provide standardised "treatment".

Also, for the first time, the Government will finally take a stand on the ethical issues involved with ART that had previously been only talked and debated upon about and never addressed in "black and white".

These guidelines for the practice of ART and accreditation of infertility clinics and supervision of their performance aims at filling the lacuna and also provide a means of maintaining a national registry of ART clinics in India.

The guidelines submitted by ICMR deal with areas including minimal requirement for opening an ART clinic, essential qualifications of the ART team and ART procedures that have to been followed in a three-tier prescribed system.

The guideline also deals with the screening of patients for ART (a procedure that has rarely been put to practice), patient selection and categories of infertility care units that they should be referred to.

A section has been dedicated to the code of practice, ethical considerations and legal issues which includes responsibilities of the clinic, information and counselling provided to the patient, requirement for sperm donors, oocyte donor and surrogate mother.

Important sections that the guidelines has addressed in the submitted document are legitimacy of the child born through ART, adultery in case of ART, rights of an unmarried woman to artificial insemination with donor semen and posthumous artificial insemination with husband's semen through a sperm bank. Speaking about the situation that the country is now in, an official said: "The increasing demand for ART has resulted in mushrooming of infertility clinics in India and there is no reliable information on the number of the ART clinics in India in the absence of a national registry of ART clinics. There is also no information on the follow-up of babies born after the use of ART to know the incidence of congenital malformation in them."

He added: "The ART practitioner is often faced with a technical challenge of trying to select the right treatment for a particular type of infertility, knowing fully well that none of the available techniques offer 100 per cent success. The practitioner also faces moral responsibility of trying to convince the infertile couple of this fact and let them know the chances of success and failure by the particular treatment that is being offered. The guideline offered would help answer all these questions and act as a ready reference for laws that would be put in place to regulate the industry."

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