The IVF ART Regulation Bill which has recently been passed by the Indian Parliament is definitely a step in the right direction because the fact of the matter is that IVF clinics have been sprouting up left, right and centre. IVF treatment has become a bit like the Wild West where pretty much any doctor who wants can call themselves an IVF specialist and start doing IVF and this obviously is dangerous for patients.

Padma Shri Prof. Dr. Kamini Rao has been successfully running the best IVF centre in Bangalore for the last 4 decades. She and her team has seen how ART has evolved in this country and some of course of the evolution has been excellent in the sense

·       the costs have come down

·       it has become more easily available

·       more accessible

·       the stigma associated with IVF has become much less

·       many more people are aware of the fact that IVF is a great treatment for infertile couples

These are all the good things, but of course with every good there will be some bad and one of the things which has disappointed us is the fact that there have been so many shady IVF clinics because so many doctors and gynaecologists think that IVF is simple to do what does it require and instead of referring my patients to a specialist why don't I just do it myself and this is exactly what they have started doing. These are often senior gynaecologists have been practising for many years and therefore are well off and have lots of patients and they say “well we deliver babies, we do caesareans, we do laparoscopies, we do hysterectomy so why don't we do IVF as well and never mind if I do not have any training or experience or expertise I will get someone else to do it for me.”

What does it require?

1.     A lab

2.     An embryologist and an

3.     IVF doctor

Yes, that is all you need to open an IVF clinic these days. And the problem of course is that there have lots of IVF clinic chains which are happily set up all these satellite IVF clinics and lots of other areas in partnership and in collaboration just in order to make more money. Only if they would have done IVF more available and accessible it would make sense. Unfortunately as a result of setting up all these satellite clinics they've ended up cutting a lot of corners because you now have travelling embryologists, you have a doctor who will fly in on a Saturday do the transfers and go away on a Sunday, you will have an embryologist who will spend two days and then do all the procedures and they often bunch 20, 30, 40 patients together so that everyone's pick-ups are done on the same day which means you have to manipulate the patient cycles, you have to adjust them in such a way that everyone grows eggs on the same day. Human beings aren't animals, you really can't do this, you can't do it well, you can do it of course and these guys have been doing it now for 10 years but the problem is that it's not great quality treatment.

If you do 30 cycles and especially if you do a lot of cycles for young women who don't even require IVF in the first place and that's the secret because anyone who comes they tell them “oh yes we have this great doctor coming from so and so place and he's only going to be coming here once and you know what we can sign you up and we can start your cycle and poor patients don't know any better they say yeah sure go ahead yes great we'll get pregnant and they don't understand the quality of care in an IVF cycle which is done like this which depends on imported embryologists and imported IVF doctors is going to be terrible because there is no one who's actually taking responsibility for what's happening”.

If you do 30 cycles 20 will go well that's not a big deal but lots of them won't. These are often the older women or the women who have polycystic ovarian disease or the women who failed IVF cycles before but the trouble is there is no one answerable there's no one accountable. They don't share any information at all and it's always things like the doctor from Bombay will come and tell you everything and finally when the doctor from Bombay comes he's so busy doing 20 embryo transfers that he has no time to talk to patients and the patients haven't even seen the face of this specialist doctor who's doing all the procedures. This is exactly why IVF has started getting a bad reputation in this country and this is why it's so important that you have this regulation so that there is some transparency some accountability some answerability so you don't have someone who comes in for one day does the procedures and then goes away and then effectively abandons the patients because that's exactly what's happening.

The heart of an IVF clinic is the IVF lab. The IVF lab is run by an embryologist who needs to be there all the time because eggs don't suit your convenience and only grow on a Monday or a Tuesday they will mature whenever they are and you need to tailor your IVF treatment according to the patient cycle. You can't tailor the patient cycle to suit the travelling doctor's convenience but this is exactly what all these satellite IVF clinics have been doing for so many years and doing it very successfully and they make tonnes of money so obviously no one's arguing with success but all this cost cutting and corner cutting and taking shortcuts is terrible for patients.

If you're going to do things let's do them properly no shortcuts that is not fair at all on a patient that just because they can't travel to Mumbai. Therefore, they get second-class quality treatment because nothing else is better that's just not right and of course the other problem is with some of these large corporate chains which have started which are again purely profit-making there is no transparency or accountability. Sure they'll ask you lots of questions and they'll fill up lots of forms so that it appears that they're meeting all the regulatory requirements but they will not provide even a basic thing like an embryo footer to the patients which means definitely they're hiding stuff and this is again dangerous and while it's great to have regulations my worry is that a lot of these regulations will just mean more paperwork and more forms and obviously someone has to pay for filling in all these forms and paperwork and guess who that's going to be that's going to be the patients which I would also say it's fine provided the basics were not lost sight of and the basics should be that every IVF cycle should be documented properly. Every IVF patient must be given photos of their embryos openly and transparently so they can be sure they receive top quality treatment. If this is done then this regulation is a great step forward because good clinics will obviously keep on doing better and the bad clinics which don't have the experience or the expertise or the full-time doctor or just doing it in order to make money will hopefully die away. If you want to find out a good IVF clinic and you want to find out how you can be sure you're going to a good clinic please visit Dr. Kamini Rao Hospitals.

A detailed guide about the practices involved in ART is covered in the Fellowship in Reproductive Medicine Program. The institution has been successfully conducting the IVF fellowship in India and many other short-term certification courses. The institution has crossed over 500+ students in a very short span of time. What are you waiting for? Come join us today!