A woman in Australia had the shock of her life when she came to know that the baby she delivered was not hers but someone else’s because of a human error.
The fertility clinic admitted to a mix-up of the embryos leading to the mother giving birth to someone else’s baby, reported AFP.
The Brisbane clinic said that a human error caused the embryo of one patient to be “incorrectly transferred” to another who later gave birth.
In a statement late Thursday, Michael Knaap, chief executive at Monash IVF, said, “I want to say how truly sorry I am for what has happened.” “All of us at Monash IVF are devastated, and we apologise to everyone involved. We will continue to support the patients through this extremely distressing time,” the clinic chief said.
IVF or in vitro fertilisation, is a process where the eggs are removed from a woman’s ovaries and fertilised with a sperm in a laboratory. When the fertilised eggs become embryos, they are placed inside the woman’s uterus.
The process is expensive and does not guarantee success every time.
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How Mistake Came To Light
The mistake came to the fore in February after the child’s parents asked for their remaining embryos in storage to be transferred to another IVF provider. Things took an unexpected turn when the staff found one more embryo than expected.
The discovery led to an immediate investigation where it was found that an embryo from a different patient had been “incorrectly thawed” and transferred to the mother.
“The investigation also found that despite strict laboratory safety protocols being in place, including multi-step identification processes being conducted, a human error was made,” according to the statement.
The IVF clinic said it has informed the affected patients within a week to apologise and offer support. The incident was also reported to the regulators by the clinic including Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee.
It also voluntarily reported the incident to the new Queensland assisted reproductive technology regulator.
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Past Cases
However, this is not the first time when the clinic has been in the news.
Last year, Monash IVF paid A$56m in settlement to hundreds of patients whose embryos were destroyed despite them being viable, reported BBC.
In a landmark class action, the case found that about 35 per cent of the embryos, which were actually normal and could have resulted in a viable pregnancy, were found to be abnormal by the faulty screening.
