Mumbai: Forty years after India’s first officially documented test-tube baby was born in KEM Hospital, the civic hospital will inaugurate a state-of-the-art in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) centre on Monday. The centre, called MAA, is a public-private partnership between the hospital and its former students, Dr Anjali and Aniruddha Malpani, and will be inaugurated by state health minister Prakash Abitkar. The main aim of setting up the MAA clinic is to provide the most “affordable” IVF treatment for women in the city, said Dr Anjali Malpani. While an IVF cycle costs up to Rs 3 lakh in the private sector, she said the KEM centre will offer it at 1/5 of the sum. Over 100 women already registered for various IVF treatments at the hospital in the 2 months that the centre was open for out-patient consultation.
A couple of days back, the first intrauterine insemination (IUI) — the most basic infertility treatment in which concentrated sperm is placed directly into the uterus — was carried out at the KEM IVF clinic. “We have modern embryology laboratory facilities, digital medical record-keeping, and state-of-the-art advanced IVF technology,” said Dr Anjali Malpani, who pledged to spend Rs 1 crore annually for MAA clinic for the next 5 years. Cryopreservation of embryos, eggs, and sperm will soon start in the clinic. The centre, located next to the only multi-storeyed building on the KEM campus, will also focus on teaching and research. “This multidisciplinary team in a teaching hospital will be dedicated to delivering safe and effective fertility treatment,” she said. Harsha Chawda, born in KEM Hospital on August 6, 1986, was India’s first scientifically documented IVF baby; most of the lab work was carried out at the Indian Council of Medical Research’s National Institute for Research in Reproductive and Child Health, located near KEM. However, ICMR a few years back credited Kolkata-based Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay with India’s first test-tube baby, delivered in 1978, a few months after the world’s first test-tube baby, Louse Brown, was born in the UK.
