Gujarat HC directs hospital to collect critically-ill man's sperm as wife pleads for child

The couple got married in October last year. The man was infected with COVID-19 recently and his condition kept worsening. He now suffers from multi-organ failure and the doctors have said he has slim chances of survival. On hearing this, his wife decided to seal their relationship forever by giving birth to his child, a wish that could only be possible through IVF

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday directed a hospital in Gujarat's Vadodara to urgently collect sperm samples of a critically-ill patient so his wife could bear his child through In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF).

The couple got married in October last year. Subsequently, the man was infected with COVID-19 and his condition kept worsening. He now suffers from multi-organ failure and the doctors have said he has slim chances of survival. On hearing this, his wife decided to seal their relationship forever by giving birth to his child, a wish that could only be possible through IVF under the given circumstances. However, as the hospital refused to grant her wish without a court order, she moved the Gujarat High Court on Tuesday with an urgent plea.

Justice Ashutosh J Shastri directed the Vadodara-based hospital to conduct the procedure for the collection of his sperm and store them in an appropriate place as per medical advice. "The ad interim relief is granted in an extraordinary urgent situation before the court and the same shall be subject to the outcome of the petition," the court observed.

IVF is an assisted reproductive technology, which helps in fertilization by extracting eggs, retrieving a sperm sample and then manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish. The embryo is then transferred to the uterus.