SCOTLAND'S largest private fertility clinic has seen a three-fold rise in women donating eggs since the payment for donations tripled.
The rise in the number of IVF treatments at the Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine (GCRM) has risen sharply since fees increased for donors in April last year and more older women seek to have children.
It has done around three treatment cycles a month using donor eggs over the past year and a half.
Prior to April last year, when payments for egg donors were put up from £250 to £750 per time, it carried out just one a month.
Dr Marco Gaudoin, the GCRM's medical director, said he believed the higher fee had made more egg donors come forward.
"The additional remuneration is a positive incentive. We do still get some donors who do say they were planning to donate eggs anyway and the fee has given them the added prompt," he said.
"We also ran a couple of advertising campaigns trying to recruit egg donors, one of which coincided with the fee increase."
He added that most donors were in their mid to late twenties. Some were single and did not want children, while others had completed their families.
Dr Gaudoin said despite the higher number of donors, there was still a huge demand for donor eggs from older women wanting children. His clinic sends around 12 women a month to a centre in Spain because so many women want IVF donor treatment.
Most women seeking treatment with donor eggs were in the late thirties to mid-forties age group. The £5100 procedure had a 33% chance of success per cycle.
"It's well known that women are putting off having a family until later in their lives and I think we are going to see this trend continue," he said.
"When they do decide to start a family in their mid to late thirties, they may encounter difficulties and have to turn to IVF. Some may find that the quality of their own eggs is poor and they can't get pregnant with IVF using their own eggs.
"Some decide to stop having any more treatment, but others decide to try with eggs from younger donors giving them a better chance of success."
Donors inject themselves with hormones to stimulate a high number of eggs developing in their ovaries. The eggs are then retrieved by medics under sedation and mixed with the recipient's husband's sperm to create embryos, one or two of which are put into the recipient's womb in the hope she will fall pregnant.
Typically, potential egg donors have to go the clinic nine times over several weeks. They have blood tests to make sure they don't carry any genetic conditions, counselling to ensure they have thought through the consequences of having genetic offspring they may never know, and scans to see how eggs are developing.
"It is a time-consuming process for egg donors, and factoring in loss of earnings, and perhaps child-care expenses, I don't think £750 is a lot of money," said Dr Gaudoin.
Juliet Le Page, 54, from Edinburgh, has two children conceived using donor eggs. She welcomed the development. "Donating eggs is a very altruistic deed, and it's good news that more women are coming forward to do it," said Mrs Page, who runs Fertility Concerns, which advises women trying to conceive.
"Not every women who needs to use donor eggs can afford to go abroad or wants to go abroad, so if we can encourage more women in Scotland to donate eggs that would be great."
Last year the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the government watchdog, set up a group to address the donor shortage. It is chaired by Professor Sheila McLean, of Glasgow University, who has called for a public awareness campaign on the issue.
Scotland's main NHS fertility clinic at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary also offers egg donation, as does the private Nuffield Clinic in Glasgow, but neither had seen an increase in women donors.
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