The Assuta Hospital in Israel evokes an “incident”. A woman, eight months pregnant, discovered during a routine examination that she was pregnant by another partner. A commission created by the Israeli Ministry of Health has been commissioned to investigate the matter.
This woman underwent fertility treatment that led her to resort to in vitro fertilization at the Assuta Hospital in Rishon Lezion, a coastal city south of Tel Aviv. It was during an examination that doctors at the hospital realized that the fetus had no genetic link to the patient or her companion. The doctors inseminated him with an embryo that was not his.
ongoing investigation
Forty couples resorted to the same procedure on the day of the artificial insemination of this woman in this hospital that performs 50% of the in vitro fertilizations in the country. These other couples will undergo genetic tests as part of the investigation carried out by the commission created by the Ministry of Health. The investigative committee will be made up of health professionals, including fertility and obstetrics experts, it says. Ha’aretz.
“The case in question in Rishon Lezion was reviewed last night. Experienced doctors were mobilized and the case was immediately referred to the Ministry of Health,” Assuta management said.
The investigation to determine the origin of the fetus and try to find out if the embryo of this couple was inseminated to another woman, focuses on all cases of people treated on the day the woman’s ovules were extracted, fertilized, frozen and thawed .
“When embryos are thawed, two people need to be present,” explains Professor Cyrille Cohen. The names must be verified, unfortunately the error is human. And this error is serious. There are two essential questions: who do these embryos belong to? Are these embryos from this mom?
However, this type of error is extremely rare. Last November, a couple filed a complaint in the United States after an embryo exchange. The two families had been found and each had recovered her child. Since 1982, 400,000 babies worldwide have been conceived through in vitro fertilization. A number that is constantly increasing, while in France one in four couples find it difficult to conceive a child.
Source: BFM TV
