Jiangsu Provincial People’s Hospital (JPPH) will set up an “ovum bank”. Unmarried women can choose to freeze their healthy ovum in advance so even if they are older than the best child-bearing age, they can get pregnant when they are willing to have children.
“The Section for Outpatients receives calls for unfreezing embryos from families that want to have a second child nearly every day,” said Professor Liu Jiayin from JPPH.
The central liquid nitrogen container of the JPPH is mostly used for keeping frozen embryos, rarely for keeping frozen ovum.
The “ovum bank” launched by JPPH will enjoy a major development in the future. According to experts, for some young nonpregnant women infected with malignant tumors, surgery or chemotherapeutic and radiotherapeutic treatment may do harm to their ovaries.
With this technique, these patients can choose to freeze their healthy ovum before treatment and store them for the future.
“We have helped some tumor patients to freeze their ovum at present. There are also several unmarried ladies coming for storing their ovum with this technique,” said Professor Liu Jiayin.
According to the experts, a series of ethical disputes are still challenging the technique for egg freezing and recovering. Doctors shall strictly check on the women for this technique.
