Awareness campaign for gamete donation goes around France

The Biomedicine Agency is visiting around ten cities in France to encourage sperm and egg donation, as waiting times for those requesting it are getting longer.

“Make parents”this is the slogan of the latest awareness campaign of the Biomedicine Agency to encourage the donation of gametes (sperm and oocytes). Since the law of August 2021 and PMA for all, demand has exploded, whether for couples or single women, and waiting times are getting longer: two years to receive an oocyte donation, more than a year and a half for sperm. The Biomedicine Agency is organizing for the first time a tour of France in ten stages with a bus that stops in ten cities where there is a Cecos, a donation center.

On site, doctors and representatives of associations, but also, for the first time, people directly concerned who have donated or received gametes, are going to meet the general public to recruit as many donors as possible in the field, to explain and reassure.

In the middle of the emblematic Place Saint-Sauveur in Caen, where the campaign started on Wednesday, September 18, the volunteers of the biomedicine agency in purple T-shirts, like their bus, do not go unnoticed. Vincent and a friend, both in their twenties, let themselves be convinced. Shaken by nervous laughter, they wonder. “I thought it was paid. Guys who do this to make a little money…”, he begins. “It’s false, it’s free”, a volunteer answers him.

“It’s an act of solidarity. All costs incurred in making a donation are covered.”

A volunteer

to franceinfo

There were 676 sperm donors compared to 890 egg donors in 2023. However, it is a more serious procedure: hormonal stimulation with daily injections for twelve days, explains Christine Denoual-Ziad, gynecologist at the Caen University Hospital. “We plan to stay in hospital for one morning for a visit to the operating room, she specifies. These oocytes will be collected in small tubes, they will be able to be given to the recipient who is waiting.”

The campaign specifically targets 18-24 year olds without children and couples under 44 with children, “patients in particular who would not have come to the sites, concerned despite everything, continues the gynecologist. We will be able to offer appointments quickly and directly. This shows that it is not obscure, we are not in the depths of a strange laboratory.”

Another argument: the positive feedback from Eve, 26, on her donation of 18 eggs last year. “It’s a long process, with commitment, but it’s not that difficult, she estimates. It’s really a nice gesture, we don’t expect anything in return, it’s just brotherhood and sisterhood towards people who can’t become parents.” This is also what Perrine, born with an ovarian malformation and who became a mother thanks to a woman’s donation, testifies: “I couldn’t believe it. I’m so happy.”

“When I was told at 16 that I wouldn’t be able to have children, it was very complicated for me. Today, I’m very proud to be the mother of three little ones.”

Perrine, former gamete recipient

to franceinfo

The waiting time for an egg donation in France is two years. The challenge is to increase the number and diversity of donations, concludes Claire de Vienne, spokesperson for the promotion of gamete donation at the biomedicine agency. “From the moment a woman or a couple is of Afro-descendant, they will have less chance of having a compatible donor, so they will have a longer waiting time.” The campaign ends on October 11 in Toulouse.