IVF with Egg Donation is something that many couples need to go through to get a baby. But did you know that the cost egg donation in UK is not covered by the NHS? If a couple needs to go down this route then they’re looking at a minimum of £5,000 per cycle, and can be up to £12,000 once other expenditure (like donor expenses and analysis tests etc) are taken into place. Then, the average success rate, ie, a donated egg being implanted and leading to successful pregnancy and live birth, is just 30%. But for many couples this is their only option. However it can actually be cheaper and have a higher chance of a live birth if the Egg Donation takes place abroad.
Egg Donation is cheaper abroad
As stated above it can cost up to £12,000 per cycle in the UK for a donor egg and IVF cycle. In Europe you can expect to pay from €4,500 in Poland, or around €6,000 in Spain, so significantly less even when you take into account the flights and any accommodation needed in the country where you have chosen the clinic. Also many of the first meetings and consultations take place via video calls, to lower the cost in the early stages. In many cases the process has to be repeated if cycles fail and if you can save a significant amount by going abroad then it means you can pay for more cycles, giving a much higher chance of successful pregnancy.
The Egg Donor can remain anonymous, unlike UK Donors
Would you want to know who donated the egg? Or would you prefer just to know that the donor matched your hair, eye and skin colour (which is more or less compulsory in clinics in all countries) In the UK the laws changed in 2005 so that any child that was conceived from a donated egg (or sperm) had the right to find out who their biological parent was when they reach age 16 – though it is important to note the donor would have no financial (or other) responsibility for the child. Subsequently the number of people donating their eggs has lowered as women would prefer to remain anonymous as a donor. So with less people willing to donate there is obviously a far smaller pool of eggs to choose from in the UK.
There are more clinics to choose from
In the UK there are 71 clinics that can perform an IVF cycle with Egg Donation, although this of course depends on the availability of eggs that match the requirements needed by each individual couple. In Europe there are over 500 to choose from, meaning the process can be started a lot sooner than in the UK. Popular countries that UK patients head to are Spain and the Czech Republic, as they both have a higher number of clinics to chose from, to ensure that the process can start sooner rather than later. It’s also a fairly stressful time so if the chance is there to take a long weekend or a few days in a warmer country to spend time together as a couple then take it!
EggDonationFriends is a great resource for information about the process, including a lot of helpful videos, rankings and an egg donor database. If you’ve got to the point where this is the route for you, or perhaps if you’re not sure which route to take then it’s definitely worth taking a look at the website to give you the best picture of how Egg donation and IVF works.