Al Ain: An advanced medical procedure to help women give birth to babies free of inherited genetic defects will be available here by the end of this year.
The pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is currently available in only a few countries, and Tawam Hospital will be the first to offer the treatment in the UAE.
Dr Ernest Suchanek, head of the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) laboratory at the hospital, said the Government has approved the budget for the project that is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
"With this procedure doctors can detect and discard genetically defective human embryos," said Dr Suchanek. "The PGD is a technically demanding and complex procedure," he said.
Doctors take an egg from a woman and fertilise it with her husband's sperm at the lab. When the resulting embryos develop to a certain stage, the doctors take a single cell from an embryo and send it for molecular analysis.
The analysis, called Polymerase Chain Reaction, helps in identifying the sequence (DNA code) that determines the genetic inheritance.
The embryos found carrying genetic anomalies are discarded and those found free of abnormalities are selected and implanted in the mother's womb, that later develop into healthy foetuses.
Dr Suchanek said the procedure can identify dozens of genetically determined diseases, including many serious ailments a child can face in his or her life.
"Giving birth to a genetically sound and healthy baby is the dream of parents and a prime objective of medicine," he added.
Dr David Robertson, Director of the IVF Clinic at Tawam Hospital, said the PGD procedure would be available at the planned new IVF facility at the hospital.
The clinic has two full-time and one part-time consultant and a specialist doctor. It has five technical staff members at the laboratory, three ultrasound technicians, and ten nurses, he said.
"All of us are very busy," he said, noting that the clinic has been performing 14 IVF operations in addition to handling around 60 patients every day.
People, both Emirati and expatriates, have been coming to the clinic from all over the UAE and also from neighbouring GCC countries.
"The clinic has helped hundreds of couples to start a family," said Dr Robertson. "Infertility is becoming a bigger problem everywhere in the world," he said.
