Own Correspondent|A SPERM donation craze has hit Harare after an In-Vitro Fertilisation Zimbabwe team led by Dr Tinovimba Mhlanga called for well-wishers to donate sperms in exchange for a token of $80 per donation.

A recent advert which has gone viral invited potential sperm donors to visit the lab located in Harare.

The sperm are used for In-vitro fertilisation, where a woman’s eggs and sperms are brought together outside the womb in a dish in a laboratory.

The potential mother receives treatment to stimulate the formation of follicles, after which Dr Mhlanga extracts eggs in the follicular fluid from the mother through aspiration under ultrasonic guidance in an operating theatre adjacent to the IVF Laboratory at The Avenues Clinic.

They are then passed in a tube through a hatchway between the theatre and the laboratory to embryologist Tinei Makurumure.

The eggs and sperm provided are then placed in a fertilisation medium in a dish in the laboratory.

The woman goes home soon after the eggs have been harvested. The embryologist monitors closely the development of any embryos.

A few days later, when there is an embryo ready to be transferred in her womb, the woman comes back for embryo transfer.

A microscope video camera facility is one of the recent innovations introduced in The Avenues IVF laboratory and theatre.

“Through the microscope video camera facility, the patient is able to see which embryo is picked and we are able to explain why we have chosen one embryo over another.

“They are able to see everything as it happens in the laboratory while they are in the theatre,” Dr Mhlanga said.

Unused embryos are frozen for possible future use.