Rome, April 8 (beraking latest news Salute) – On April 9, 2014, following the appeal presented by the courts of Florence, Milan and Catania, the Constitutional Court sanctioned the illegality of law 40/2004 on medically assisted procreation (Pma), in the part in which it prohibited the use of an external donor / donor of ova or spermatozoa in cases of absolute infertility: that day, the Council thus also admitted heterologous fertilization in our country. And since then about 10 thousand babies have been born thanks to this technique, estimates the Italian Society of Fertility and Sterility-Reproductive Medicine (Sifes-Mr).
In Italy, couples who cannot conceive due to lack of suitable gametes can therefore access the donation, both for the male and the female part. A safe procedure, which has allowed many families to fulfill the dream of a child. In particular, according to the Pma register of the Higher Institute of Health (Iss), 601 children were born thanks to the donation of gametes in relation to the treatments performed in 2015; then 1,457 in 2016, 1,737 in 2017 and 2,002 in 2018. In total, 5,797 children, looking at the latest data available.
“2018 – explains Filippo Maria Ubaldi, president of Sifes-Mr – is the last year for which official data are available and, since the ban on the donation of gametes was lifted, at least 6,000 were born in our country. children. But from the experience of the Italian Pma centers, it can certainly be said that children born thanks to heterologous are more and more numerous, year by year: we can estimate that they reach about 10,000 (hypothesis of a further 2,000 born from heterologous women in the 2019 and 2000 in 2020, as the official ISS data is not yet available) “.
“The success of this technique – he continues – is due to the fact that in many cases it is able to solve problems related to male infertility, to early menopause, but above all to the search for a pregnancy when the woman is over 42-43 years old, the more common situation for which couples turn to a fertility center: procrastinating motherhood, very often because there are problems in finding work stability and the welfare system does not help the would-be parents, inevitably leads to a degeneration of the female gametes, for which it is necessary to resort to egg donation. It allows a 42-43 year old woman, who would not have a 10% chance of conceiving, to increase her chances up to at least 40% “.
But while being able to solve the problem of low oocyte quality, Ubaldi points out, “women who choose this option must always be properly informed about the potential obstetric risks related to a pregnancy at an older age than the average: up to the first trimester of pregnancy the risks are the same at all ages, but later, during the II and III trimester, the conditions of the uterus, the elasticity and the vascularity of the tissues become important, and can increase obstetric risks and the danger of preterm birth, gestational diabetes and hypertension “.
“It has now been 7 years since the cancellation of a ban that took place on the initiative of people with infertility problems, who asked the judges to protect their rights – commented Filomena Gallo, Sifes-Mr councilor, lawyer who defended the plaintiff couples to the Consulta and secretary of the Luca Coscioni association – but unfortunately we must affirm that since then politics has not made any progress on issues concerning reproductive health “.
“It is serious – adds Gallo – that after 7 years from a sentence that reopened a technique that was applied until 2004 without difficulty and in compliance with international laws and Italian decrees, this procedure is not provided uniformly by public structures and there are no tariff nomenclators on the services included in the Lea with the expense of the NHS (all except the pre-implantation diagnosis). Choosing to build a family, for those who have the requisites to access the PMA in the national health system, has become very difficult”.