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As an NHS fertility clinic is suspended for losing embryos, one patient describes her anguish...
‘THE ROAD TO IVF can be a long, painful, and rocky one,’ says Nastasia Alberti, who was due to begin her third round this year. And it’s been made rockier still for the 32-year-old now that her local clinic, the Homerton Fertility Centre in London’s Hackney, suspended services last week.
The fertility regulator HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority) found ‘significant concerns’ at the clinic, including errors in the embryo freezing and storage process, and it’s thought up to 150 embryos may have been affected. Safety concerns about the clinic were raised as far back as 2018, and in 2019 an inspection found swabs had been left inside some women during egg collections. While in 2022 the clinic closed briefly due to staff shortages, the week before Nastasia was due to begin her first round of IVF.
Of the recent suspension, a spokesperson for Homerton said, ‘We can’t know the extent until embryos are thawed out.’ Patients now face an anxious – and potentially long – wait to discover if they’ve lost their chance of ever becoming parents.
‘There are patients there who are having cancer treatment, or have low egg reserves, or have endometriosis like me,’ says Nastasia. ‘It’s always hard to go through fertility treatment. Nobody wants to go through it, but when you do, you need to feel cared for and have trust in the people helping you try to become a mother.’
Nastasia says this week’s news – which she first heard about when a friend who had read the news story WhatsApped her – has done little to restore her faith.
Six weeks ago, she received a call from the clinic who told her there was a problem with the storage of her embryos, and that she would face a two-week wait to find out whether they had been lost. There was no mention a
