First IVF Babies Born in Public Sector Hospital in Kerala

 

At the SAT Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, the oldest tertiary-level maternal and child care hospital in the State, on Friday, there was a sense of jubilation in the air.

The hospital achieved a rare milestone when the first babies to be conceived through advanced Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in a public sector hospital in the State were born here in the
early hours of Friday Nov 22,2013
 

The twins — a boy and a girl — born to Nikhila and Sureshkumar of Uchakkada, Parassala, here with the help of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), were hale and hearty and weighed 2 kg each, Sheila Balakrishnan, who heads the Fertility Centre at the hospital, said. 

Advanced fertility treatment utilising ART had so far been available only in private sector hospitals in the State where the cost of various procedures could be anything upward Rs.2.5 lakh

SAT Hospital became the first public sector hospital in the State to offer similar facilities, when in August last, a fertility centre with all modern equipment, clean room, and laboratory facilities were opened here as one of the projects under the Rs.120-crore Prime Minister’s Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY). 

The first batch of nine women underwent IVF procedures in April 2013.Though three women conceived, only two pregnancies were carried to term, the first of which was delivered on Friday Nov 22,2013

So far, 34 women had undergone IVF procedures here, and there had been six viable pregnancies. Even in the best centres in the world, the success rate for IVF was only about 25-30 %