UK’s first successful womb transplant

Subject :Science and technology

Section: Health

Context:

The first successful UK womb transplant has been performed at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, United Kingdom.

Details:

The recipient is a 34-year-old woman born without a womb, and the donor is her elder sister, who already has children of her own.
- The patient was born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), a rare condition affecting about one in every 5,000 women.
- With MRKH, women have an underdeveloped or missing womb.
- However, their ovaries are intact and still function to produce eggs and female hormones, making conceiving via fertility treatment a possibility.
The operation was funded by Womb Transplant UK, a charity trust.
The first successful womb transplantation was performed in 2012 in Gothenburg in Sweden, since then Sweden and the US have been particularly successful in pioneering the technique.
More than 90 womb transplants have been carried out internationally, including in Sweden, the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Czech Republic, Brazil, Germany, Serbia and India, with most involving a living donor. About 50 babies have been born as a result.

What is the procedure involved?

One team of surgeons removes the womb from the donor and a second team transplants it into the recipient.
Donor and recipient undergo extensive counseling before the transplant to ensure psychological suitability, and the recipient must take drugs that suppress the immune system afterwards to prevent her body from rejecting the new organ.
Once the recipient has finished “using” the womb she has further surgery to remove it, so that the immunosuppressant drugs can be discontinued.

Concerns involved:

The procedure is medically safe for donor and recipient.
Alarming reports of organ black markets and vulnerable people being trafficked for their organs.

India:

The first uterine transplant performed in India took place on 18 May 2017 at the Galaxy Care Hospital in Pune, Maharashtra.
India’s first uterine transplant baby, weighing 1.45 kg, was delivered through a Caesarean section at Galaxy Care Hospital in Pune.