Sperm Donation
 do you want to become a sperm donor? Please surf to www.spermadonor.be or call the Laboratory of Andrology: +32 2 477 66 52.
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The most important prerequisite for sperm donors is that they are aged between 18 and 44, and healthy. In order to verify the latter a number of tests are conducted prior to the donation. But apart from that donors do not require any medical treatment. They are merely asked to refrain from ejaculating for a number of days running up to the donation and to travel to the location where they will produce or deliver the sperm sample.
For example volunteers are recruited amongst the student population of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the staff of the Universitair Ziekenhuis (UZ Brussel), among men due to have a vasectomy or men who are to undergo a fertility treatment with their partner and whose sperm has been deemed fit.
But of course also other men are welcome!
Although in principle there is no limit to the number of times a donor may donate, practice tells us differently. When the donor's sperm has resulted in the successful birth of a certain number of children sperm donation has to be discontinued to avoid the risk for consanguinity, i.e. the risk that children from the same parents have children together.
All in all these factors allow a sperm bank to be built up for use at the right time during treatment and ensure the availability of sperm from a wide range of different donors. Be advised this doesn't mean that as a patient you can reserve donor sperm for multiple inseminations (yet).
Donor sperm may offer a solution for couples where the woman's fertility is normal but the man produces no or too few (motile) sperm for use in the treatment. Couples in which both partners are carriers of the same genetic defects may also be able to reduce the risk of transmitting the genetic abnormality to the child they conceive by using donor sperm .
Artificial insemination