A.I.D.S. risk stops inseminations

Press, 16 January 1986, Page 7

A.I.D.S. risk stops inseminations

PA Auckland Doctors at National Women’s Hospital are halting a programme of artificial insemination by donor while frozen semen supplies are quarantined as a safeguard against A.I.D.S.

The programme will lapse for between six months and a year. The move follows reports of two overseas cases in which women have contracted A.I.D.S. from infected donors in artificial-insemination-by-donor programmes. A.I.D.S. is transmitted through infected blood or semen.

The man heading the National Women’s programme, Dr Freddie Graham, described as “extremely slight” the chance of any patients having been exposed to A.I.D.S. He said that since the beginning of last year, semen donors had been screened to exclude those in high-risk A.I.D.S. groups.

Donors had been tested for the presence of antibodies to the A.I.D.S. virus. But because of the increasing incidence of A.I.D.S. and reports of one case in Australia and another in the United States, the team had decided to follow the Australian practice of quarantining semen, said Dr Graham.

Quarantining was used because people exposed to A.I.D.S. did not necessarily develop antibodies to the virus immediately, he said.

Donors would now be rechecked after six months to a year to see if they had developed antibodies. Dr Graham said the actual quarantine period would not be set until doctors had heard the findings of the Australian Fertility Society sub-committee which was reviewing the matter.

Thus couples already on the programme would have to wait at least six months for further treatment.