Staying in Touch with Older Sperm Donors
Blog written by Fairfax Cryobank Director of Operations, Michelle Ottey, PhD.
Every sperm bank presents a medical profile of some sort for their donors. This profile usually presents the medical and genetic health of the sperm donor and of his first and second degree relatives. When a sperm donor is actively participating in a donor program he will be young, healthy, and have relatively young parents. The medical profile is often just a snapshot in time, but it needs to be more. It really needs to be a living profile.
At Fairfax Cryobank, we work with our sperm donors while they are actively participating in the donor program, and in the six months after they stop, to collect blood samples and screen their general health. If anything changes with their health or the family’s health while they are active, it is easy to update their profile. Historically some sperm banks stopped updating the donor’s medical profile when a sperm donor was finished with the program.
It is incredibly important for sperm banks to keep up with their donors even when they finish with the program. This should be true for anonymous and ID sperm donors, and it is something that you should look into when researching sperm banks. Ask the sperm bank if they have a mechanism for old sperm donors to update their medical information and how that is shared with the patients.
We know that as our sperm donors and their families grow older, it is inevitable that medical history will change. No one lives forever. We make it a priority to stay in touch with our sperm donors and are working to contact older donors. The updated information is available on the summary profiles, which are available online.
