New details on the major IVF bungle where a woman gave birth to a stranger's baby

There are urgent calls for tighter industry regulation tonight as new details emerge into what went wrong in the Monash IVF bungle. A missing embryo was thought to be a counting error before a woman gave birth to a stranger’s baby.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
A single mistake leading to heartbreak for two families.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
So this is a great human tragedy.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
What was said to be a counting error ended in
a Brisbane woman giving birth to a stranger's baby. The
two women were patients at Monash ivf. Woman A had
a number of embryos successfully frozen. Months later, when there
was one less than she was initially told, doctors said
they must have counted wrong, but really one had been

(00:31):
transferred into woman B, who became pregnant. There was no
formal audit at the time, but it was eventually discovered
when the birth parents requested their remaining embryos be transferred
to another provider. How the mix up happened is still
being investigated.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
They absolutely are legal ramifications here.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
In a separate mix up, another woman was incorrectly given
the wrong embryo with the Clayton Clinic earlier this month.
That led to the CEO's resignation. But there are now
calls for a national regulator to prevent this ever happening again.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's not even about reducing the risk of this happening.
This needs to be an impossibility.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
There is currently a rapid review being undertaken that is
due to report back in three months.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Monash IVF says it's supporting the families involved. Ainsley Cosh
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