Managing a Sperm Bank: European Experience

Choosing to give the gift of life is a decision that impacts the donor, recipients, and the children conceived. Sperm banks are responsible for ensuring that a person is both physically and mentally suited to be a gamete donor and has been adequately informed and that people whose donation could present a health risk are identified and excluded. Even with a robust donor suitability assessment in place, adverse events can occur following treatment with donated gametes, making traceability from procurement to recipient crucial. Donor conception poses a series of medical and ethical considerations, some of which are regulated across the European Union, others are left to the autonomy of each member state, and some are the responsibility of each individual sperm bank to address. Most predominant are securing traceability, limiting the number of children born from a single donor, release of identifying information about donors to donor children, and specific exclusion criteria used for donor suitability assessment. In this chapter, the key aspects and considerations associated with managing a sperm bank in Europe are presented by the Quality Manager, Laboratory Specialist, Chief Operating Officer, and Medical Director of European Sperm Bank.