Search results

We are making changes to protect the health and safety of our staff, our clients and the wider community. VARTA is aiming to continue its normal service provision, however there may be delays or changes to our activities.

If you have been trying for a baby for a while without success you are no doubt starting to feel a bit stressed. When month after month goes by without any sign of pregnancy it’s easy to start to worry about whether it will ever happen and to feel a bit down about it all. Add to that the stress of having IVF treatment, especially when it fails. In the midst of this someone might tell you ‘Just relax and you’ll get pregnant’.

Guiding principles

VARTA strives to be an efficient, transparent, accessible, collaborative and consistent regulator of the fertil

In assisted reproductive technology (ART) there are two ways eggs can be fertilised: IVF (in-vitro-fertilisation) or ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection). In IVF thousands of sperm are added to each egg in the hope that one will fertilise the egg. In ICSI the embryologist uses a microscope and very technically advanced equipment to select a single sperm which is injected into the egg.

The Victorian Government asked VARTA to conduct an independent consultation of donors who would be affected by any changes to legislation arising from the Victorian Law Reform Committee’s recommendation to allow all donor-conceived people access to their donor’s identifying information. The VLRC’s report Inquiry into Access by Donor-Conceived People to Information about Donors, was published in March 2012.

Fertility specialists are constantly looking for ways to improve your chance of getting pregnant through IVF or other assisted reproductive techniques (ART) to have a baby. In the last few years a number of so called ‘add-ons’, or ‘adjuvant’ therapies, have been offered by IVF clinics.

Add-on treatments are the new black. They are provided (most frequently, sold) to patients undergoing in vitro fertilization on the premise that they will improve the chances of having a baby. However, the regulation of add-ons is consistently minimal, meaning that they are introduced into routine practice before they have been shown to improve the live birth rate.

New research shows that more than half of women who have IVF overestimate their chance of having a baby after one treatment cycle and wish that they had been given more realistic information about IVF and the likelihood of success.

VARTA's 2022 webinar, what is known about the health of children and young adults born after IVF or ICSI, was held on 15 June. Three experts, Professor Jane Halliday, Professor Rob McLachlan, and Dr Sarah Catford discussed the history and evolution of treatments for male factor infertility and the long term health effects associated with these treatments.

Donor sperm has been used for many decades to help couples where the male partner is infertile to have children. In more recent times, same-sex couples and single women increasingly have also used donor sperm to have children.