Guy's: Publication of Grade A incident report

04 January 2010

The HFEA has today for the first time decided to publish the report and Licence Committee minutes relating to Grade A incidents. Two of which occurred earlier last year at Guy’s Assisted Conception Unit.

This action has been taken to reassure patients that both the HFEA and Guy’s responded to these incidents to learn the lessons and because of the high public interest in this issue.

Guy’s informed the HFEA immediately of two incidents which occurred at the unit in February last year. The unit also took immediate action by calling in an independent embryologist to assess its laboratory procedures. The HFEA also investigated the incidents itself in line with its established policy.

Over the past months the incidents have been thoroughly investigated and considered by HFEA Licence Committees. The law requires that the HFEA looks into incidents in a structured and fair way so that the centre concerned has the chance to respond to the issues raised and to challenge the conclusions of a Licence Committee.

Our Licence Committee made an initial recommendation in September 2009. Guy’s had the right to make representations in response, a right which they exercised. A further Licence Committee heard representations from the unit and concluded that Guy’s ACU has taken sufficient action to reduce the risk of such incidents happening again. This included introducing a system of electronic tagging and identification of samples.

Earlier last year, the HFEA announced that it would publish the incident reports and Licence Committee minutes relating to Grade A incidents considered by Licence Committees after 1 October 2009, as a move towards greater transparency and to promote better public understanding of how serious incidents are investigated.

Alan Doran, Chief Executive of the HFEA, said:

"Serious incidents in the fertility sector are rare but they do happen. When they do, everybody involved – patients, the centre, the public - wants us to make sure that we understand why they happened. That is why we investigate them thoroughly, as has happened with the incidents at Guy’s ACU.

"By releasing these documents we are being transparent about how we go about this important work.

"We owe it to people using fertility services to ensure that those services are of the best quality. We will continue to work with fertility clinics to improve services, to reduce risk and to build on best practice.”

Page last updated: 04 January 2010