DONOR BANK AND DONOR PROGRAMMES

The law of the Russian Federation allows both anonymous and non-anonymous donors. At the Clinic of Reproductive and Prenatal Medicine of the European Medical Centre there is a fully operational bank of donor oocytes and donor sperm. We began its establishment in May 2013 and really wanted it to be a high-quality bank that could be used, if necessary, both by our patients and by other clinics.

In accordance with the №107N regulation, candidates for oocyte donation undergo a full examination at our clinic, including a consultation with a fertility specialist, a physician, a geneticist and a psychiatrist. We do not rely on a certificate issued by a psychoneurological dispensary since possession of such a document does not truly reflect the factual psychic health of a person. Therefore, our candidates' visit to the psychiatrist includes a certain testing and a one-hour interview with the doctor. There have been cases when it was the psychiatrist who rejected a candidate, although the latter met all the other requirements. At the EMC laboratory, candidates undergo a number of laboratory tests such as karyotyping (the investigation of the number and the structure of chromosomes), clinical blood count and blood biochemistry, tests for occult infections and other pathological processes.

Eligible oocyte donors are represented by young healthy women up to 35 years of age. It is very important for us that the donor should have her own child or better yet, two children. Prior to the examination, they provide the respective original documents, photos of their children as well as of themselves as children if they want to.

If there are no contraindications for oocyte donation, a superovulation stimulation protocol is employed under the supervision of a fertility specialist and the nursing staff of the clinic. Egg cells are obtained via an ultrasound-guided ovarian puncture with IV anesthesia.

After donor oocytes have been obtained, they are evaluated by an embryologist and then are frozen by vitrification for further use in IVF donor programmes.

Donors must necessarily take some rest between programmes, which is an obligatory condition of our cooperation.

All data about an oocyte donor are entered into a catalogue that is available for patients and is used when choosing a donor. Here the following information is included: age, nationality, blood group, Rhesus factor, height & weight, education, occupation, phenotypic traits (the color and the shape of eyes, the color and the structure of hair, a facial and nasal shape etc.).

The electronic donor card contains information about donation results: the number and the quality of the obtained egg cells, the percentage of normal fertilization, the number and the quality of the obtained embryos, the occurrence of pregnancy and delivery.

Eligible sperm donors are represented by young healthy men up to 35 years of age with fertile semen analysis values. They undergo a full examination at clinic as well, as per the №107N regulation, whereafter they provide a few semen samples that are then frozen and stored over an incubation period of 6 months. Following the end of the period, a sperm donor undergoes a second test for occult infections, whereafter the previously cryoconserved sperm can be used in IVF protocols or in intrauterine insemination. The sperm donor data are entered into a catalogue that becomes available for patients who are in need of this service. To make the choice easier, donors provide their childhood photos.

At this point, there are more than 40 oocyte donors and about 20 sperm donors in our bank. It is regularly supplemented as we constantly bring in new candidates for donation.

We have also managed to create a bank of donor babies. These are embryos derived from an oocyte donor and a sperm donor. This programme is used by couples who need both donor oocytes and donor sperm as well as by single women of late reproductive age.

You can download donor catalogues here.

Non-anonymous donors are the people you bring in yourself. These can be your relatives, acquaintances or candidates you have found on the Internet. Irrespective of where you have found them, requisitions imposed on non-anonymous donors are absolutely the same as those imposed on anonymous donors.

Therefore, before you ask your candidate to undergo any tests, please bring him/her to us. It is only after a consultation, an examination and medical history taking that we can give the donor the go-ahead for taking the tests and analyses as well as for obtaining medical conclusions of the respective specialists. If the analyses show no abnormalities, we can initiate a programme. There is but one reservation. Do not forget that there is a six-month quarantine introduced for sperm donors, hence in case with a non-anonymous sperm donor we will also have to wait through this period.