Often, it is difficult to find an altruistic egg donor. Egg sharing is a programme that helps women who need donor eggs to find a suitable egg donor with a shorter waiting period.
Fertility drugs usually stimulate the ovary to produce more eggs than what is needed by a woman in one cycle. Some women undergoing fertility treatment wish to donate some of their eggs to other women, as this reduces the cost of the sharer’s treatment, at the same time providing another woman a chance to conceive.
We accept healthy non-smoker women between the age of 18-35, with BMI of <30 and with no family history of genetic diseases, as egg sharers. We screen all potential sharers to confirm absence of infections, diseases or any transmissible genetic conditions.
In such cases, the egg sharer undergoes a full cycle of IVF or ICSI. However, after egg collection, half her eggs are donated to a matched recipient (provided at least 8 eggs were collected). If fewer eggs are collected, the treatment of the egg share programme continues using all her eggs. The sharer’s eggs are inseminated with her partner’s sperm, and the eggs donated to the recipient are inseminated with the sperm of the recipient’s partner. The resulting embryos for each couple are transferred to the respective woman’s womb under a well-controlled process.
