IVF laboratory at Mater Dei has everything but patients

Mater Dei Hospital has a fully-equipped IVF laboratory, The Sunday Times has learnt. However, it is not being used because the costly treatment for infertile couples is not yet available on the national health service.

Sources said that the hospital's laboratory is also stocked with special cryopreservation containers normally used to freeze sperm.

In a one-sentence reply to a series of questions, a spokesman for the Parliamentary Secretary for Health said that "policy regarding IVF has still to be developed and direction for service development has to be given from higher political levels."

According to hospital sources, this means that even though the state-of-the-art hospital has the capacity to provide IVF treatment, it will not be offered on the national health service unless Parliament enacts legislation to regulate the sector.

Other questions sent to the Parliamentary Secretary relating to the cost of the laboratory, as well as whether there are plans to offer IVF at Mater Dei or create a sperm bank, remained unanswered.

IVF is available in Malta, but only at one private hospital, and the sector remains unregulated.

In 2005, the Parliamentary Committee for Social Affairs, chaired by Clyde Puli, had drawn up a detailed report with recommendations on the best way forward to regulate the sector.

The committee had heard the opinions of medical and ethical experts, couples who underwent IVF treatment and individuals who felt they had something to contribute to the debate.

The extensive report was passed on to the then Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg for draft legislation to be prepared. However, no law was ever tabled in Parliament.

The debate on IVF resurfaced recently when the Church Theological Commission reiterated the stand adopted by the Vatican against artificial fertilisation.

The president of the Theological Commission, Fr Hector Scerri, said fertilisation should not take place in a lab or a test tube. He insisted the Church can never accept artificial fertilisation, even if it does not involve harming, destroying, freezing or experimenting on the human embryo.

Fr Scerri said the Church was open to IVF legislation, not IVF. He explained that the Church is willing to participate in social dialogue about how legislation to regulate IVF should be introduced, but this would only apply to those who choose to act outside the Catholic faith.

However, the chairman of the Bioethics Consultative Committee Michael Asciak, who participated in the Social Affairs Committee's eight-month discussion in 2005, had also said that the Vatican's document on biotechnology should encourage legislation rather than hinder it.

He insisted that the parliamentary committee's recommendations three years ago should be taken on board by the government.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott recently told The Sunday Times that the sector should be regulated at the earliest opportunity and he echoed the Pope's statement that a country's legislation need not necessarily be in conformity with moral principles.

"If every sin was made a crime, we would have a totalitarian government, which is the opposite of what a government should be," Fr Serracino Inglott had said.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com