Belgians turn to classifieds to find egg donors

nzoom.com  November 20, 2003

A shortage of donor eggs in Belgium has prompted childless couples to turn increasingly to classified ads and the Internet in a desperate search for women willing to donate.

"Often this is the only way for infertile women to obtain donors," Professor Thomas D'Hooghe, the coordinator of the Fertility Clinic at the Katholic University at Leuven, says.

"So if they don't have success here we encourage them to go to other sources."

He was cautious about using advertisements and the Internet.

"It's a complex issue," he says. "I am concerned about the commercialisation of medicine, and some of the financial aspects. But I am concerned about maintaining anonymity -that is absolutely crucial."

During egg donation, a woman takes ovulation-stimulating drugs and the resulting eggs are collected with ultrasound guidance. The eggs are then mixed with sperm in the laboratory and the resulting embryos placed in another woman's body or frozen for future use.

D'Hooghe says that in the two years the centre has been operating, he has seen a growing demand for services. The centre now accommodates about 20 to 30 donation cycles per year.

Both donor and recipient are screened for suitability, and if accepted, a donation cycle is attempted. About 20 to 30 pairings of donor and recipient are deemed unsuitable every year.

It is not uncommon for many clinics to have waiting lists of two years or more, D'Hooghe says. Nationally, he estimates there are about 500 donation cycles on the Belgium Donor Registry waiting list.

Several factors might be leading to an increase for demand for donors, such as age limits set by many centres, he says. His centre sets an age limit of 40.

The Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad recently ran a story on a couple who posted an advertisement seeking a donor. Journalist Geert Neyt says the paper sees about two ads for egg donors per month; this week a French couple listed an ad seeking a donor.

The couple told him they saw it as their last chance to have children, but only got a few responses and to their dismay, money was often the first subject.

But after the story was published they contacted Neyt and said that they had received four suitable responses.

"I think they were in heaven," Neyt says.