The desire to become parents does not depend on gender, nationality or diagnoses.
Modern opportunities allow you to go through a surrogacy program even having a diagnosis of HIV or Hepatitis B/C.
This type of treatment is much more complicated than standard and already developed surrogacy programs. In case of infected patients the sperm undergoes preliminary purification, and the fertilization occurs only in specialized clinics that have a dedicated, completely autonomous line intended for work only with infected biological material. There are no more than 3 dozens of such clinics in the world, and our company cooperates mainly with Georgian and Polish ones.
This is how an approximate algorithm of the surrogacy program for infected patients looks like:
- Taking medical background of the future parents or the future parent
- Stimulation of the ovaries of the oocyte donor
- Double purification of the sperm of the future father in special environments with subsequent flotation
- Analysis of spermatozoa, collected as a result of purification; PCR test for the presence of the virus.
- Fertilization of oocytes with purified sperm, cultivation until the 3rd-5th day of development
- Genetic diagnostics of the embryo(s) (upon request of the patients)
- Vitrification and storage of obtained embryos
Then the standard protocol of surrogacy follows.
It is advised to know that:
- The sperm purification procedure minimizes the risk of possible infection of the fetus and/or the woman carrying it, but does not give a 100% guarantee;
- The purification of female oocytes does not provide an adequate level of protection of the fetus and the surrogate mother, therefore today we do not allow using oocytes of infected women in the surrogacy programs.
A possible alternative may be donation of biological material – oocytes, sperm or embryos. In each individual case we can discuss with patients their prospects and methods of treatment, so that each parent may choose the optimal way of giving birth to a much-awaited, and most importantly, healthy child.