Embryos have gone missing from a New Zealand fertility clinic.
An Auckland fertility clinic has apologised to a family after losing frozen embryos in its care.
The embryos went missing from Fertility Associates’ Auckland clinic last year, Fertility Associates chief medical officer Dr Andrew Murray said in an email to clients this morning.
However, the clinic had confirmed none of the missing embryos had been transferred to another patient.
“Late last year we became aware that frozen embryos belonging to one of our Auckland patients had gone missing while in our care,” Murray said.
“Despite not having all of the definitive answers, we provided immediate transparency to the impacted family as soon as we detected the issue and have kept them regularly updated.”
Murray told the Herald this afternoon the incident involved a single patient treated at Fertility Associates’ Auckland laboratory in October last year.
An “exhaustive and methodical investigation”, including asking an independent international laboratory expert to audit the clinic’s gamete and embryo storage, had confirmed Fertility Associates’ processes were robust and secure, he said.
“[And] importantly, no other patients have been affected. Despite these efforts, we have been unable to locate the patient’s embryos or confirm how they went missing.
“We fully appreciate that the lack of a conclusion and clear answers is frustrating – we share that feeling and have done everything we can to get a definitive answer.”
Fertility Associates understood the “anxiety and concern” a missing embryo would create, Murray said in his email to clients.
“We know how much emotional energy goes into the IVF process and have sincerely apologised to the family. We can confirm with absolute confidence that no embryo has been transferred to another patient.”
Transfers in the period in question have been audited and both human and electronic witnessing had confirmed no other issues occurred, he said.
“A recent audit of our Auckland clinic has also confirmed there are no additional missing embryos.”
Fertility Associates used RI Witness, an electronic witnessing system that used Radio Frequency Identification tags and barcoding to track and monitor patient samples such as eggs, sperm and embryos throughout the IVF process.
“It provides an automated, real-time layer of security and traceability, avoiding potential mix-ups by sounding an alarm at the workstation if samples are mismatched.”
Fertility Associates was committed to continuing to strengthen laboratory systems and governance across all sites, including moving the Auckland frozen embryo storage to a new, larger, dedicated area within the Greenlane building, Murray said.
It was also improving senior laboratory oversight and reinforcing training, quality assurance and internal reporting mechanisms.
“The relationship we have with our patients is built on trust, and we appreciate that trust has been shaken through this situation,” Murray said in the email.
“On behalf of Fertility Associates, I want to sincerely apologise for any concern this news creates for you and your family. It is important to us that you receive this information directly and are reassured that no other patients are involved in this incident.”
Murray told the Herald that as of 1.30pm, four patients had contacted the clinic after receiving this morning’s email.
He wasn’t aware of any clients cancelling plans to use its services after hearing of the embryos disappearance.
Fertility Associates wasn’t facing any consequences from health authorities over the loss, Murray said.
The clinic had reported the loss of the embryos late last year to the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee, an Australia-based industry body responsible for setting standards for the performance of assisted reproductive technology through a code of practice.
All New Zealand fertility clinics are audited against this code, Murray said.
Fertility Associates had also told Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora, which applies the Ngā Paerewa Health and Disability Services Standard – the mandatory standard for fertility services in New Zealand – as well as the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology and Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology.
The Herald has contacted Health NZ and the Health and Disability Commissioner for comment.
In 2023, deputy Health and Disability Commissioner Dr Vanessa Caldwell found Fertility Associates had breached a man’s rights by losing his sperm.
The man needed chemotherapy for cancer and so had sperm samples stored in a facility later bought by Fertility Associates, but the clinic was unable to find the samples.
Tests confirmed the man no longer had any sperm he and his partner could use to conceive through in-vitro fertilisation.
Egg retrieval from the man’s partner – conducted before the loss of the sperm was discovered – had been a “long and difficult process” and the man told the commissioner the experience had been “devastating” for him and his family.
A Fertility Associates investigation concluded the samples were most likely lost because staff didn’t follow policy and do an inventory check when a storage bank holding the samples was decommissioned, Caldwell said.
There was insufficient information to make a conclusion on the most likely cause of the sample loss, “due to poor record-keeping”, she said.
Since the complaint, Fertility Associates had apologised to the couple and made a financial settlement, begun splitting patient samples between multiple locations, changed policy around documents relating to the retirement of a storage bank, updated its auditing tool for retiring storage banks and requiring an incident report when any sample wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Fertility Associates told the commissioner no system could prevent all human error, and it would be “unreasonable” for the commissioner to expect perfection, the Herald reported at the time.
Similar to other areas of medicine such as radiology, “it is provable from data and well-established that a certain error rate is inevitable” and that rate was very low for assisted reproductive technologies, it said.
In Florida last month, a couple were suing their IVF clinic after discovering the wife was impregnated with another couple’s embryo.
Tiffany Score and Steven Mills hired IVF Life to help them conceive a child in 2020, producing three viable embryos – one of which was purportedly successfully implanted by the Fertility Centre of Orlando in April last year, according to People magazine.
When their baby daughter Shea Score Mills was born on December 11, it quickly became evident she “displayed the physical appearance of a non-Caucasian child”, with genetic testing later proving she had different biological parents than the couple, who had now “fallen in love” with her.
And in Australia last year, fertility treatment company Monash IVF admitted to a second IVF mistake, again putting the wrong embryo into a patient.
In 2023, Monash IVF staff in Brisbane mistakenly implanted the wrong embryointo another woman; the recipient of the embryo gave birth to the child.