Illegal fertility centres, poor facilities raise fears

COIMBATORE: The death of a woman during treatment in a private fertility clinic in Coimbatore has raised concerns about proliferation of such clinics in the state and failure on the part of authorities to monitor them. Sources in the clinic where Sujatha Savood, 26, was admitted for fertility treatment said she died on Saturday night after she developed fits.Her relatives alleged that the fits could have been triggered by the shots she was administered for ovulation earlier that evening. The postmortem examination of her body was conducted on Sunday at a government hospital, but the findings are yet to be released.
In Coimbatore, only seven hospitals and clinics have licenses to offer infertility treatment. The directorate of Medical Services told TOI that the clinic where the woman died was not registered with them to perform assisted reproductive technology. A clinic needs to be registered with the directorate of medical services under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, to perform assisted reproduction.
“In all these years there has been no record of a single allergic reaction to the HCG injection manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, which was administered to Sujatha as part of the fertility treatment,” said the doctor who treated her. “I don’t know what caused her death but I am confident that it is not because of the injection that I administered,” the doctor added. Since the clinic did not have scanning facilities, it was not necessary to register with the Directorate of Medical Services under the PCPNDT Act, the doctor said.
A simple internet search throws up more than 10 to 15 infertility clinics in Coimbatore district. Just 50% of them have a license to offer infertility treatment. Health department officials said three of these clinics have applied for registration, and the licensing process was underway. The licensing process for one of the hospitals in Coimbatore has been on for more than a year. “We don’t have enough staff,” said Senthil Vallan, officer-in-charge of ART clinic registrations. “For ART clinics, only the joint director of medical services has to conduct inspections and process applications. She is busy with new applications and license renewals,” said Vallan.
At least four women died during treatment at infertility centres across the country between October and December last year. In 2004, Anitha Jayadevan sued an infertility clinic in Kerala, alleging that she had been impregnated with a gamete from another man, and not that of her husband. “There are many such allegations that come up,” said Dr Kamini Rao, a member of the assisted reproductive technology bill’s drafting committee. “If they do not have a strict system in place, there could be misuse of oocytes or a woman’s frozen eggs, impregnation of wrong gametes and a woman bleeding and losing her ovaries due to an incorrect procedure,” said Dr Rao. While the PCPNDT act was strengthened two years ago to rein in the mushrooming fertility clinics, its poor implementation and some outdated rules made it ineffective.
In 2013, after Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India (FOGSI) made recommendations, ART was brought under PDPNDT Act along with genetic counselling centres, genetic centres and baby scan centres. The act also gives the state’s health department the power to conduct random inspections of fertility and assisted reproductive technology centres and shut them down if they do not have registration certificates.