Vitalab - Egg Donor Program - Requirements to be an egg donor

Egg donors must fulfill the following requirements to take part in the programme:

Egg donation is mostly altruistic, but may be for a relative, family friend or work colleague. Donors are remunerated for reasonable expenses incurred while on such a programme which includes travel expenses, days off work and loss of income while on such a programme.

VITALAB accepts donors of all ethnic backgrounds and races for the programme, to allow us to select the ideal donor for each recipient.

Donating Eggs does not reduce the Donor's Chances of Becoming Pregnant at a Later Stage.

Donating eggs does not imply reducing the number of eggs in both ovaries. If a woman is born with 1 - 2 million eggs on average and only ovulates 400 to 500 times in her reproductive life, at one egg per month, where do the other eggs go? To produce an egg naturally and spontaneously every month or menstrual cycle, nature needs to recruit hundreds, of which a few will be chosen until only one, the best, reaches the final stage of ovulation, losing the remainder that began developing in the cycle in question. Those eggs that do not continue developing in that cycle are eliminated because the body cannot recycle them for reuse.

Eggs are lost at a genetically set rate from the moment of birth. Even when taking the oral contraceptive pill, during pregnancy and before puberty, the number of eggs that a female has declines gradually.

With the administration of natural hormone treatment to the egg donor to recruit eggs, we stimulate the production of eggs that would have begun to develop without medication in that cycle, but would have been lost anyway had they not been stimulated. Their maturation is monitored by vaginal ultrasound, just as we monitor the ovulation of a woman during a normal cycle, to see when the donor is ready to ovulate; the only difference being that, because of the stimulation, a greater number of eggs will mature and be ready to ovulate than just the usual one egg as in a natural cycle.

Hormone treatment is not a significant risk factor for the donor when carried out in a specialised centre such as Vitalab, because of extensive experience in the stimulation of ovulation together with strict control as well as the tailoring of treatments to the special characteristics of each donor.

Women between 21 and 35 can be egg donors. To be accepted as an egg donor, the patient must undergo a free clinical examination of their reproductive system together with a vaginal ultrasound; hormone blood tests which provide valuable information regarding their own fertility and their state of health as well as specialszed counseling concerning their potential to be mothers, greater than that received by any woman wishing to become pregnant by their own means.

A comprehensive gynaecological examination is performed. A vaginal ultrasound scan allows us to evaluate the anatomy of the woman, discovering, for example, some of the causes of irregular cycles, and excludes the presence of cysts, myomas (fibroids), polyps (benign growths of the womb lining), and other abnormalities of the reproductive system. We assess your egg quality by looking at your hormone profile (blood tests) done on the second and third day of the menstrual cycle. We confirm the absence of illnesses such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), hepatitis, syphilis, cytomegalovirus, as well as the blood group.