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India gets its first womb-transplant baby: Five things you need to know

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DailyBiteOct 19, 2018 | 17:49

India gets its first womb-transplant baby: Five things you need to know

The medical fraternity in India is divided over womb transplant.

Four years after the first womb-transplant baby of the world was born in Sweden, India has got its first on October 18 in a Pune hospital. And it’s a girl weighing 1.4 kg. She is the 12th child in the world to be born through this process — the other 11 were in Sweden and the United States.

The medical wonder doesn’t come without a fair and 'justified' share of debate over the glorified idea of motherhood and the extent to which a childless couple can go to become parents.

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But the primary success puts India on par with international excellence. It’s also interesting because last year when the Pune hospital conducted the first womb transplantation, a Swedish doctor expressed his doubts and dismissed the attempt as a “dangerous escapade of surgical cowboys.” But then, it was successful, leading to a healthy pregnancy as well.

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The medical fraternity is not celebrating, and there's a reason. (Representative image: Reuters)

Whose womb?

Generally, a family member — alive or cadaveric — can donate wombs. But there are instances of unrelated donor as well. The identity of the Swedish and the US women who became mothers through womb transplants were not disclosed.

But this was not the case in India.

The identity of both the women — Vadodara’s Meenakshi Waland and Solapur’s Shivamma Chalgeri — were disclosed by the Pune hospital when both of them underwent womb transplantations in May, 2017. In both the cases, the donors were their mothers, and the transplants were successful.

In January this year, Shivamma received embryo through in-vitro fertilisation, but she lost her child after two months. Meenakshi conceived in April trough IVF and became the first Indian mother of a womb-transplant baby girl.

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A transplant womb is not a permanent one

The only purpose of transplanting a womb is to facilitate bearing a child because a transplanted womb will not have any of the normal functions. The pregnancy can’t happen through intercourse as the fallopian tube is not transplanted. And the delivery, too, has to be through C-section. Delivery is painless as the nerves are not transplanted during the womb transplant.

So after the desired number of child births, the transplanted womb has to be removed. Otherwise, the mother will have to survive on immunosuppression medicines so that her body does not reject the transplanted womb.

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Why not adopt? The debate is on. (Photo of Pune doctors/ Coutesy:Hospital)

600 applications all across the country

According to the doctors of the Pune hospital, they have received 600 applications for womb transplant from across the country. After a lot of screening, they have shortlisted 12 and have performed transplants on six, including Meenakshi and Shivamma.

Operation is costly

The entire process — starting from transplant to in-vitro fertilisation to the birth of a baby — involves multiple operations, high risk and a close watch. For Meenakshi and Shivamma, it was free as the Pune hospital decided to conduct the first three operations free of cost. Otherwise, the treatment will be costly

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Why the medical fraternity is divided

According to an international journal, womb transplant for birth of healthy babies is still at the stage of experiment. There are successful cases, but the number of the unsuccessful ones is not less at all. The first four cases of womb transplants in the US had failed. Same was with China. Also, the technology has not been standardised internationally.

The medical fraternity in India is divided.

Unlike other organ transplantations, this is not a live-saving operation and there are other ways of becoming a parent — surrogation, adoption, if IVF fails.

There are disturbing gaps in regulations. 

Last year, when the Pune hospital successfully transplanted wombs, the Indian Council of Medical Research claimed that the hospital never sought any permission to carry out womb transplantations. The hospital allegedly went ahead with a nod from the state government.

According to ICMR, only a Bengaluru-based hospital has the permit to carry out womb transplant, only 'as an experimental procedure under a research protocol'. 

The Pune hospital, however, had claimed that ICMR approval was required for experiments and they were not conducting any experiment. Their operations were clinical procedures, which didn't require ICMR's green signal. 

 

Last updated: October 19, 2018 | 17:49
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