Health Authorities Check Fertility Centres In AP

These inspections follow busting of illegal surrogacy and baby selling racket run by Hyderabad-based Universal Shrushit Fertility Centre headed by Dr. Namrata through adoption of illegal reproductive procedures.

This led to AP Health minister Satya Kumar Yadav directing all district medical and health officers to form teams of specialist doctors, along with a non-government representative, to inspect fertility centres and find out any anomalies in services ranging from registration to providing various facilities to patients.

The inspection teams focused on facilities registered under the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, and also under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021. During the course of inspecting 327 such facilities in AP, they found that 235 facilities complied with the norms.

State health authorities served show-cause notices to two of these facilities – Universal Health Care located in NTR district and Universal Srishti Fertility Centre in Visakhapatnam.

Health commissioner G. Veerapandian said, “We have informed local police about these two fertility centres. We will continue to monitor these facilities and initiate action as per norms if they fail to comply with statutory regulations of the state.”

NTR district medical and health officer Dr. M. Suhasini said, “We are continuing our inspection of all fertility centres to ensure they all comply with the statutory norms. With regard to the Universal Health Care, its reply to the show-cause notice is awaited. Based on the reply, state health authorities will initiate necessary action.”