Beijing, Mar 11: Around 10,000 couples in the Chinese capital of Beijing have applied for test-tube babies, pointing to growing demand for the technology in this Communist country, a media report said today. Though China had touched the peak in assisted reproduction technology, quite a few organisations specialising in such treatment were not offering professional services to many infertile couples, the 'Beijing Morning Post' quoted Zhang Lizhu, a gynaecology and obstetrics specialist with a clinical hospital attached to Beijing University, as saying. According to Zhang, test-tube baby technology is still in great demand in China. There are 200 medical centres across the country offering infertility treatment, of which only a dozen have gained wide popularity, the paper said. Zhang belongs to the research group that successfully developed China's first test-tube baby, Zheng Mengzhu, who celebrated her 15th birthday yesterday. On March 10, 1988, the first baby conceived via external fertilisation and embryo transplantation was born at the clinical hospital at Beijing University.
The research group has led China in experiments on breeding test-tube babies using donated ova or frozen embryos.
At present, the reproduction medical centre at Zhang's hospital has become one of China's main reproductive treatment bases, breeding 1,000 test-tube babies in the past 15 years, with a 40 per cent success rate.

Bureau Report