MADURAI: Citing an RTI reply which said there are 155 private fertility clinics in 26 districts in Tamil Nadu and none in government hospitals, activist Veronica Mary urged the State government to establish fertility clinics at government medical college hospitals.
The RTI response from the Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services and Directorate of Medical Education said while Chennai has 59 such private clinics, Coimbatore has 14, Madurai has 11 and Salem has 10. “Though there are more than 30 government medical college hospitals and over 40 district headquarters hospitals, none has any fertility treatment centre,” Mary pointed out.
To provide fertility services, adequate medical infrastructure to provide intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), morphologically selected sperm injection (IMSI), laser hatching, sperm bank, egg bank, embryo bank, and fibroid clinic are required, she said.
Mary further added that the AIIMS has had the facility since 2007, and Kerala and Andhra Pradesh governments had established the facility at all government hospitals in the recent past. “Due to the sole dependency on private fertility clinics, the government must step in to fix uniform treatment costs at all the private fertility clinics that collect lakhs of rupees as fee,” Mary mentioned.