Assisted Fertility Treatments

The most recent statistical data on assisted reproduction in Finland. The statistics include trend data from 1992 onwards.

Assisted Fertility Treatments 2007 - 2008

The 2007 and 2008 Statistics on Infertility Treatments are the first that reflect the effects of the Act on Infertility Treatments, which entered into force on 1 September 2007. The Act lays down provisions on the donation and storage of gametes and embryos for use in assisted reproduction treatment. According to the Act, a person who may have been born from a donated gamete or embryo shall, upon attaining the age of 18, be entitled to learn the identity of the donor. It was thought that this amendment would decrease the availability of donated gametes and curb the growing trend of "fertility tourism", seeking fertility treatment abroad.

In 2007, treatments with donor oocytes totalled 632, which is 13.2 per cent down on the previous year. At the same time, however, there was a clear increase in the use of donor sperm. In in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatments and related frozen embryo transfers (FET), the use of donor sperm increased by 34.7 per cent in 2007. By contrast, in previous years, the use has remained at more or less the same level. In the first half of 2007, presumably in anticipation of the entry into force of the Act on Infertility Treatments, there were far more treatments with donor sperm than normally. For reasons of availability, treatments with donor oocytes did not increase in the same proportion. The number of treatments with donor sperm in inseminations also increased in 2007, by 8.4 per cent. At the same time, inseminations carried out with partner sperm remained at the same level as previous years. According to the 2008 preliminary data, the number of treatments with donor sperm decreased by 21.5 per cent.

In 2007, close to 8000 IVF and ICSI treatments and related FETs were started. According to the 2008 preliminary data, the number of treatments increased by 6.1 per cent, totalling 8480. In 2007 and 2008, the number of IVF treatments decreased by 1.0 per cent while FETs increased by 16.5 per cent. The number of ICSI treatments remained unchanged. In proportion to the population, the number of treatment cycles started in 2008 was 7.2 per thousand women of fertile age (15 to 49 years), which is slightly more than in 2008. This share has been growing steadily. In 1998, the rate was 5.7 cycles per thousand women of fertile age, that is, in ten years, the number of treatments has shot up by 26.3 per cent. In 2007, three started procedures for surrogacy were reported, but they resulted in no children. The Act on Infertility Treatments prohibits surrogacy arrangements.

Table 1. Use of donor gametes in infertility treatments and the number of started treatments for surrogacy, 1992-2007*

^{*No data on donor sperm and donor embryos or surrogacy were collected before 2001.}

• More about fertility treatments
• More about inseminations
• Data content, abbreviations and definitions
• Tables (pdf, 34 kt)
• Tables (xls, 153 kt)
• Whole statistical summary (pdf, 270 kt)

Back to the top

Return to the main page of the Reproduction section

Additional information: