A woman who lost 12 embryos after a major power failure at a fertility clinic says she feels “a huge amount of loss”.
A state-wide blackout which hit Adelaide, Australia, in late September cut the power to Flinders Fertility clinic. The embryos of twelve families were lost after the facility’s back-up generators failed.
Jo Posgate, 45, from Murray Bridge, South Australia, was among the patients affected. Ms Posgate, who has polycystic ovaries which can impact fertility, thought she “had a good chance” at becoming pregnant after 12 of her eggs were retrieved.
“'Then we got a call on Thursday morning to say they had died due to the power outage,” she told Daily Mail Australia of the blackout which lasted a few minutes.
“My first feeling was disbelief that it could happen in a hospital," she told 7 News.
“There's a big part of us that's in grief,” she said. “We feel such a huge amount of loss. We've cried so much over the past few days.”
But Ms Posgate was able to make another bid at having a child as she had two embryos frozen separately which were not affected by the power cut.
Doctors implanted the pair of embryos on 3 October, and Ms Postgate and her partner Michelle, 47, soon hope to have “two little babies on board”.
Ms Posgate will discover whether the implantation has been successful on 19 October.
She had previously spent $90,000 AUS to have her son Joel.
Stefan Moro, the chief executive of the Flinders Fertility centre said following the outage: “This is a devastating situation for our patients, and very distressing for our staff.
“Despite every effort by our scientists, the embryos are no longer viable,” he said.
He added that patients were contacted directly, and have been offered individual support and counselling.
Families who want to undergo the procedure once again will not be charged.
