After IVF’s horror year, the sector must be held to the highest standard

2025 was a horror year for Australia’s IVF sector.

One of its major players, Monash IVF, was forced to admit to two bungles: first becoming aware in February last year that an embryo transfer error at its Brisbane facility about a year earlier had resulted in a Queensland woman giving birth to a stranger’s baby, before then revealing a different woman had been implanted with the wrong embryo during a procedure at a Melbourne clinic in June.

In the second situation the woman had been implanted with her own embryo. However, the couple had intended to undertake reciprocal IVF: a process whereby a woman in a same-sex relationship carries her partner’s egg.

Last week this masthead confirmed both families involved had received huge secret settlements from Monash IVF.

But while consumer confidence may have been slightly shaken by these obviously negligent scenarios, it seems unlikely the scandals will have much impact on IVF uptake going forward: the fertility treatment sector has become one Australian families – and the nation’s birth rate – are increasingly reliant on.

There are well over 100,000 IVF cycles performed each year, and one in 16 babies is now born through IVF.

Women are also factoring the possibility of IVF treatment into their plans for the future: the number of women choosing to freeze their eggs has tripled over the past three years. Career, cost-of-living pressures, a lack of family-friendly housing and not yet having found a suitable partner are among the factors pushing having children further down the line.

This trend of “fertility preservation” comes even as experts warn against the false assurances freezing eggs can provide.

All of which is to say, Australia’s IVF sector has become far too big to not be held to the highest standards. Families are spending tens of thousands of dollars on fertility treatment and they deserve access to crucial information about the likelihood their investment will yield a result.

The Australia and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database (ANZARD) publishes annual de-identified clinic data showing success rates for live births per initiated IVF cycle. Its latest report showed there was an average success rate of 23.8 per cent but the figures varied from as high as 35 per cent to as low as 4.5 per cent in 2023.

And, as the Herald’s health team, editor Kate Aubusson and reporter Angus Thomson, reveal today, the growing number of women who are choosing to freeze their eggs in anticipation of fertility treatment down the line now have access to similarly independent information, with the launch of a federal government-funded calculator, using ANZARD data.

While other egg-freezing “success rate” calculators exist, this is the first to be independent of any fertility company, a crucial distinction. The federal government should be praised for supporting this work.

Independent and transparent information is needed to rebuild trust in Australia’s fertility sector. The women investing thousands of dollars in the hope that it promises deserve it.

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