Speaker：Dr. Wong Yuen Kwan Alice (Kwong Wah Hospital)
Paper Title: Running Assisted Reproductive Technology on a charity basis in Kwong Wah Hospital

Abstract：

Infertility is one of the three stigmata of being unfilial in the traditional Chinese culture. In the past, the blame frequently went unreasonably to the wife, leading to unsolvable unhappiness, sorrow and marital dys-harmony.

Even with time goes by, the concept of the role of a woman is to give birth to a baby remains. Whatever her occupation is, from professional to housewife, pregnancy is still an ultimate goal of many women in order to signify her possession of a “complete family and life”. Even with our modern knowledge in human reproduction, knowing that both partners can contribute to infertility, women still face the enormous stress of being involuntarily childless.

Upon the birth of the first In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) baby Louise Brown on 25th July 1978, the word “test-tube baby” spelled a magic to infertile couples. It helped so many couples all over the world to turn their unreachable dream into real life. Though being a well recognized therapy, this expensive treatment was not supported by the Government as infertility was not considered as an “illness” by many people. IVF seemed to have been a privilege reserved for the wealthy people in the developed world.

By the end of the 20th Century, the IVF service in Hong Kong was sparse and was provided mainly by the two University Hospitals, namely Queen Mary Hospital and Prince of Wales Hospital, and also as a small scale service in the private sector e.g. Hong Kong Sanitorium & Hospital. It was still unreachable by the majority of the Hong Kong infertile couples. Numerous couples were barred off from IVF and remained in despair due to the great expense, limited quota and low success rate.

However, at the turn of the Century, the Tung Wah Board recognized the need of this group of couples and viewed them as “patients” who deserved for medical treatment. With the official inauguration of the Dr. Stephen Chow Chun-kay Assisted Reproduction Centre in Kwong Wah Hospital on 29th February, 2000, Tung Wah pioneered IVF as a charity service in Hong Kong. Apart from the initial setting up of the Assisted Reproduction Laboratory, the Tung Wah Board provided uninterrupted financial support to the maintenance of the service in all these years, and sponsored all the laboratory consumables charges for all couples. Under the assistance from Tung Wah Board, the service in Kwong Wah Hospital continues to blossom. At present, in addition to the standard IVF procedure, the Centre also provides advance technique of Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), cryopreservation using vitrification technique and blastocyst culture. Her accumulative pregnancy rate has been kept at over 40% and almost 500 IVF babies have been born.