Why Caucasian/Indian Egg Donors Are So Important in Assisted Reproduction and Surrogacy?

Online, May 23, 2013 (Newswire.com) - "Egg donation is a highly Altruistic process", according to Dr. Samit Sekhar who is the IVF and Surrogacy Program Director at the Kiran Infertility Centre, Hyderabad, India, "It requires someone with a big heart to donate their oocytes for a relative or sometimes even for strangers. First of all there is nothing new about egg donors/oocyte donation. It's been around for more than 15 years now, ever since the advent of IVF. Awareness has only crept in now thanks to the internet. Yes, all egg donors do it for the money. There is nothing wrong in it. It helps someone else start a family which normally would not have been possible and it also provides the donors with monetary help."

Some articles over the Internet and in some media channels harp on the so called negative aspects and dangers of egg donation. Dr. Sekhar says that the procedure involved is the same and the stimulation of ovaries is exactly the same as that which a woman would undergo if she herself is undergoing an IVF cycle. If it is safe for women to undergo IVF then why is it unsafe for a donor to undergo egg donation? It is a very safe procedure with almost zero complication rate if performed at a good clinic under the expertise of a skilled medical practitioner.

In one such negative article, a South African physician prescribes Lupron instead of HCG to trigger ovulation and suggesting that Indian Doctors maybe unaware of this, Dr. Sekhar's response is candid, "I would like to see any scientific studies which advocate the benefits of using Lurpon instead of HCG! In fact, it does not bring down the incidence of OHSS and using Lurpon will actually result in poor egg quality and limited pregnancy rates". According to him there are other proven scientific ways to bring down incidence of OHSS in donors to 0% instead of Lurpon. Dr. Sekhar further says that if Indian fertility Doctors were not adept at using best and updated medical practices as the article seems to suggest, then thousands of infertile patients from all across the world would not be lining up at Indian Clinics in order to become parents through IVF and surrogacy.

According to Anjani Kumar, Case Manager and Donor Coordinator at the Kiran Infertility Centre, "At our clinic, apart from the Indian donors, we have Caucasian egg donors from Europe, USA and South Africa as well. We rarely have to advertise for egg donors. Because of the excellent treatment they receive at the Kiran Infertility Centre, they refer other friends or colleagues for this wonderful act".