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India’s first sperm bank has completed eight
years. And during this time, 500 children have been born by what
is known as Therapeutic Insemination by Donor (TID). Some of the
couple have come back for their second baby. This shows that the
initial inhibitions about TID have vanished.
TID has emerged as a sure shot remedy for male
infertility and is a boon for childless couples where the husband
is infertile for various reasons.
When this sperm bank was established at Malpani
Infertility Clinic in Colaba, it was the first time that cryopreserved
semen was used. Till than doctors were using fresh semen for donor
insemination. However, with the advent of AIDS and the knowledge
that the HIV virus can be transmitted in the semen, they realised
that it was becoming increasingly dangerous to use fresh semen because
it was still not possible to test for HIV.
After liquefaction, the semen sample is mixed
with an equal quantity of the cryoprotectant medium, a chemical
which prevents the sperm form being damaged even at very low temperatures,
and is loaded into plastic straws. These are uniquely coded and
sealed and then placed in steel containers of liquid nitrogen where
they are frozen to -196 degree Celsius. The next day one straw is
removed and thawed to see how the sperms survived the cold (cryosurvival).
Only samples which contain at least 25 to 40 million sperm are accepted.
Talking to MANAS TIMES, Dr. Anirudh Malpani
said: “The sperm are then kept in cold storage for 3 to 6 month,
which is how long it take for the HIV virus, which causes AIDS,
to become detectable in a person’s blood after infection. This
is called the quarantine period, during which the samples are not
touched. The donor’s blood is then re-tested for HIV, hepatitis
and STDs’ and only those samples which come from negative donors
are used for treating infertile couples.”
The donors are healthy men between 20 and 40 years
of age, form a sound background and usually graduates. Semen samples
are taken form those who are healthy, with no family history of
illness. The donor’s identity is kept strictly confidential,
Dr. Malpani informed.
Success statistics mimic nature. They are
10% in a 25-year-old woman in one cycle; so that over six treatment
cycle the chance of pregnancy is about 60% in a 25-year old. The
chances of success are higher if the female partner is young and
has no fertility problems. Once a women gets pregnant, the pregnancy
is like a normal pregnancy, with the same risks of miscarriage and
birth defects as any other.
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