MENTION information technology or IT and the image of India immediately crops up.

Now, India is slowly becoming synonymous with advances made in another field – fertility tourism.

India is becoming the egg bazaar of the world. Just Google “India” and “fertility” and hundreds of sites which offer assistance in fertility treatment pop up.

According to the private Indian Society for Assisted Reproduction, there are some 400 IVF (in vitro fertilisation) clinics in India, providing an estimated 30,000 assisted reproductive treatments a year.

There are no exact figures, but doctors say a large number of people who flock to these clinics are from abroad, Singapore included.

The Malpani Infertility Clinic in the upscale Colaba area of Mumbai, is a favourite of foreigners.

At the Malpani clinic, doctor couple Aniruddha and Anjali Malpani claim to provide state-of-the-art IVF treatment at affordable prices. In an e-mail to tabla!, Dr Malpani said that his clinic sees around 100 patients from abroad every year. Most of them are non-resident Indians (NRIs).

He also sees patients from Singapore and referred us to his website where a couple from Singapore have posted their appreciation of the clinic.

This couple, who wished to remain anonymous, said in their posting that they had tried various treatments and when they did not work, turned to the Malpanis and were blessed with triplets.

There are several similar success stories posted on his site from couples in the United States and Britain.

Dr Rama’s Institute for Fertility in Hyderabad is another clinic which claims to have had patients from Singapore but did not want to disclose their
names to tabla!.

Why is India becoming a favourite destination for fertility tourists? For one, the cost.

One donor egg IVF cycle costs US$5,500 at the Malpani clinic. This includes all medical treatments, procedures and medication.

In the US, the average cost is US$12,400, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
The other reason is the ready availability  of egg donors.

In Britain, for example, there is an acute shortage of women donors.

Those seeking donor eggs face a long wait.

There is also a cap on the number of embryos that can be planted in the womb – aimed at preventing high risk multiple pregnancies. In India, there is very little regulation and doctors are allowed five implants which substantially increases the chances of pregnancy.

In the US, the going rate for an egg from an Ivy League student is reported to be in the region of US$60,000.

According to media reports, the majority of Indian egg donors are housewives who are paid between Rs6,000 and Rs40,000 rupees. At the Malpani clinic, one of the upmarket outfits in India, payment to the donor is US$1,000. There are numerous other clinics which offer cheaper treatment.

For NRIs, finding an Indian donor overseas is even more difficult. An Indian woman in the US, who was advised by her American physician that a donor egg was her only option for conceiving, turned to the Malpanis.

She wrote on his website later: “The odds were very low that I would find a donor from my own race (Indian) in the US. Besides, we could not take that much time off work and we didn’t have the financial means to go through a search for someone in the US.

I started browsing the Internet looking for Indian egg donors and found Dr Malpani’s website.”

Dr Malpani implanted four embryos and she delivered a baby girl.

The easy availability of women for surrogacy in India is another major attraction for foreigners.

The laws in the US and Britain do not allow the surrogate woman to charge the childless couple, while in India there are no such laws.

Anand, in Gujarat, is a popular place for those seeking surrogate mothers.

Dr Nayna Patel of the Akanksha Clinic in Anand was quoted in a report as saying that the hospital receives at least 40 to 50 requests per month from childless couples.

Mr Bobby Bains, a British Sikh, and his wife Vikki are now a parents of a baby girl after paying a surrogate mother in Gujarat.

“There is one baby born every week. Fifty girls are staying in surrogate houses.

In one flat I went to, there were pregnant women sitting around watching daytime Indian soaps,” he told London’s Evening Standard in May after his return to the
UK.

Dr Rama’s Institute in Hyderabad directs you to a third party which provides surrogate mother candidates.

This organisation has to be paid Rs20,000 for the service.

The clinic told tabla! that the charges for the surrogate mother come to Rs3 lakhs, 20 per cent of which has to be paid when the surrogate mother conceives and the balance after she delivers.

An additional Rs72,000 is payable if you want her to have better nutrition, monthly check-ups and scans.
In case the surrogate mother does not conceive, she still has to be paid Rs25,000 for the trouble she undergoes during the medical process.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states of the US and some European countries, was legalised in India in 2002.

In some ways, this trend is ironical: The world is turning towards India for babies when, for years, the country has been trying to rein in its burgeoning
population growth. -tabla!