Reproductive Tourism
Over the past several years the staff of La Jolla IVF has noticed a growing tendency amongst patients who require unusual solutions for their fertility problems, to criss-cross the globe in search of the appropriate infertility treatments. The main reasons for people to seek fertility treatments in countries other than their own are that certain types of treatments are forbidden by law to be performed in their own country, certain categories of patients are not eligible for assisted reproductive treatments in their own country and in some countries the waiting lists to obtain treatments are just too long. This increase in “reproductive tourism” has resulted in enabling many more patients to avail themselves of treatments than would have otherwise been possible.
The field of infertility has been a flurry of activity over the past three decades. Since the first IVF baby was born in 1978, assisted reproductive treatments have been transformed both in their technological advancements and in their effectiveness. Once an improbable game of chance, IVF and its related treatments now offer people battling to have children a refined and largely successful route to parenthood. We have come so far in such a relatively short time. In the grand scheme of things, people who were once considered intractable infertility cases can now experience the joy of a family.
