New donor registrations

Number of new donors by the year they first registered as a donor at an HFEA licensed clinic, 1992-2010

  • People who wish their sperm or eggs to be used in the treatment of others are registered at the clinic where they donated their gametes. This registration information is then submitted to the HFEA
  • New donor registrations shows the number of people who have registered as donors with the HFEA. Donors must be registered with the HFEA within five days of their sperm or eggs becoming available for use, and after counselling and screening
  • The number of new donor registrations does not reflect the amount of donated sperm or eggs available for use. This is because each donor may specify the number of families (up to a maximum of 10) he or she is willing to help create. The table below therefore includes some donors who wish to help create one family only, as well as those who wish to help create more than one. Clinics must check the number of families that have already been created before using that donor for treatment to create another family
  • The number of new donor registrations does not reflect the use of donor sperm in treatment. Donors may go on to donate in subsequent years or their sperm/eggs may be used at other clinics. Donor eggs, sperm or embryos may also be stored and used some time after the donor registered or donated. For example, donor sperm may be reserved for use in treatment to create donor siblings some years after the first child is born
  • The table below does not include those who donate to a research project. The table only includes people registering to donate their sperm or eggs for use in the treatment of others
  • The table below includes surrogacy arrangements. In these cases, the commissioning couple (or the commissioning father) are registered as donors if they provide the eggs, sperm or embryos for use by the surrogate in treatment
  • The number of egg donors shown in the table below includes both those who donate all their eggs in a treatment cycle (non-patient egg donors) and those who share their eggs with up to two recipients (egg share donors)
  • Donors can donate at, or their sperm or eggs can be imported to, more than one centre. The HFEA now allocates a unique ID number to those donors which our system identifies as the same person. By using this unique number, we have been able to reduce the number of duplicate registrations. As a result, there are some small variations between these figures and those published previously
  • This data was extracted from the HFEA's data warehouse containing Register data as at 22/12/2011.  

 

 All new donors registered
Year Sperm donors Egg donors
1992 375 451
1993 426 528 
1994 417  732 
1995 414  749 
1996 419  806
1997 343  910
1998 256 943
1999 302 1,120
2000 323 1,241
2001 327 1,302
2002 288 1,174
2003 257 1,032
2004 239 1,107
2005 272 1,023
2006 303 803
2007 360 1,024
2008 405 1,167
2009 438 1,202
2010 480 1,258

Further information

Page last updated: 28 January 2013