UK: Fertility regulator considers donor payments

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is considering increasing compensation for egg and sperm donors.

Women who donate eggs are currently paid £250, but this could rise considerably under moves to address egg and sperm shortages at IVF clinics, BBC News Online reports.

Many fertility clinics have long waiting lists, driving some childless couples abroad.

A spokesperson for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) told the BBC: ‘We will be looking at a number of issues related to donation policies, one of which will be compensation given to donors. We haven’t decided on a figure.’

The HFEA is holding a three-month public consultation into its donation policies, starting in January 2011. No decision will be made until the end of the consultation.

It follows concern over the number of Britons travelling to countries such as Spain to receive IVF because of shortages of donated eggs and sperm in the UK.

In the UK, egg and sperm donors cannot be paid but can claim ‘reasonable expenses’ for travel and loss of earnings. This is limited to a maximum of £250 per cycle of egg donation or course of sperm donation. Some fertility experts say this is too low to attract donors, and they should be paid more for their time and efforts.

Susan Seenan of the support group Infertility Network UK said it was right to look at all the policies surrounding egg and sperm donation.

She said: ‘We know that many patients are travelling abroad for treatment, often because of the severe lack of sperm and egg donors in the UK. Although many patients do receive a high standard care abroad, this is not ideal and the rules and regulations in other countries can be totally different from that in the UK.’

Seenan said patients deserved access to safe, regulated treatment in their own country, and there was a need to find some way of increasing the number of both sperm and egg donors in the UK.

At a debate organised by Progress Educational Trust and the Royal Society of Medicine in 2009, experts suggested that one of the key reasons for the shortage of donor gametes in the UK was the removal of donor anonymity in 2005. 

Egg donor expenses ‘under review’. BBC News Online, 23 August 2010

Banking Crisis: What should be done about the sperm donor shortage? Abortion Review, 1 July 2009