Breaking News! – First UK Womb Transplant
This is an historic moment – the first womb transplant in the UK. It’s a wonderful, exciting step forward in science and, for fertility medicine, it’s the dawn of a new era.
Dr Catherine Hill, interim chief executive of Fertility Network UK said: ‘This is an historic moment – the first womb transplant in the UK. It’s a wonderful, exciting step forward in science and, for fertility medicine, it’s the dawn of a new era.
This news will give so much hope to the women in the UK with complete uterine factor infertility (UFI) – about 1 in 500 women – who have either been born without a womb or who have had a hysterectomy because of cancer, large fibroids or severe endometriosis.
This news is so significant for these women because they have very limited options to become mums: either fertility treatment followed by surrogacy, or trying adoption.
But womb transplants are an absolute gamechanger. They provide the only option for women without a womb to carry their own baby, so it’s a very big deal.
There will be young women today who have gone to their GP because their period hasn’t started and who are finding out they don’t have a uterus but finally, for them, and young women having hysterectomies, there is hope on the horizon that they can carry a baby.
Going forward, Fertility Network, as the national fertility charity, has some questions about the future cost and availability of uterus transplants. Will the surgery be available on the NHS? At moment the treatment is in trials, but in a few years’ time, what happens?
In order for fertility patients to properly benefit from this amazing scientific leap forward we need this surgery to be available on the NHS.
Currently women without wombs are being failed by the NHS. Despite being completely infertile most cannot get funding to have fertility treatment and have no other options but to try and fund IVF themselves, followed by surrogacy.
Fertility Network hopes today’s news also raises awareness of their plight and makes the government think again about their guidelines for access to NHS-funded fertility treatment.’
Charlotte Bishop, director of MRKH Connect, talks about the challenges of being born without a womb here