Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Selecting a donor is an important first step on your journey toward starting a family. During your donor selection process, we recommend that you create an account to gain access to the extended profiles of our egg donors.

Your registration will provide you with unlimited access to detailed donor profiles, where you can find all the information you need to make your final decision. The registration is free and without commitment.

You can use our Donor Search Tool to help you find a donor that best matches your criteria by inputting some of your desired characteristics (eye colour, height, ethnicity, etc) and selecting profiles from the filtered results.

The final decision is yours to make. Recipients base their decision on many different personal considerations but most look for a donor who is generally a good physical match to your overall family profile. We can assist you with narrowing down your options. Contact us at contact@eevedonorbank.com.au

Known donor

When the donor and recipient know each other and have an existing relationship, this is known as a recipient-recruited donation. In this case, the recipient usually receives a donation from a friend, relative or family member.

Clinic-recruited donor

When a donor voluntarily donates their eggs to an unknown recipient, this is called a clinic-recruited donation. The donor and recipient do not know each other, and the donor can choose to keep their identity unknown; however, they must agree to provide identifying information to be revealed to a child conceived as a result of their donation once the child turns 18 or younger with counsellor approval.

A basic donor profile is a piece of information about the donor that is visible to users who haven’t created an account with us. This information includes eye and hair colour, height, ethnicity and occupation.

An extended donor profile is a much more in-depth look at each donor and includes information such as personality type, interests and hobbies, detailed medical history, and much more.

A donor’s availability can fluctuate on a daily basis. This can be due to the donor’s family limit being reached, or the supply of the donor’s eggs being exhausted. When a fresh donor is reserved they will no longer be available on Eeve until they make themselves available for another cycle.

When the clinic’s pre-requisite workup is complete, an allocation of eggs may be reserved. Depending on which option is selected, eggs may be available immediately, or there may be a waiting period for a fresh donor to cycle and/or eggs to be shipped to your location.

Once you have registered with us and selected your egg donor preferences, you will receive an email with useful information on what will happen next. Our friendly staff will give you a call or email to organise everything for you. If you are a new patient, we will:

• Book a medical consultation
• Book pathology collection
• Counselling
• Patient education

You may reserve an allocation of eggs from one donor at a time.  An allocation consists of six (6) to eight (8) eggs, either fresh or frozen. According to Australian law, donors may be used to create up to 10 families in Queensland, 5 (five) families in New South Wales, 5 (five) families in Western Australia (excluding donor’s family), and 10 women in Victoria.

Unfortunately, due to demand exceeding supply, purchasing an entire donor is not possible.

IN-VITRO FERTILISATION (IVF)

In-Vitro Fertilisation involves the fertilisation of the egg by the donated sperm in an incubator outside the body before the embryo is transferred back into the recipient’s uterus.

Your specialist will discuss your IVF treatment cycle with you. The treatment type usually depends on an individual’s medical history, age, diagnosis and other related fertility factors.

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)

ICSI is a specialised form of In Vitro Fertlisation (IVF) that involves the injection of a single sperm directly into a mature egg. Frozen donor eggs require ICSI procedure due to the vitrification processes involved in egg freezing. ICSI is also used for the treatment of severe cases of male infertility.

This may be possible depending on the availability of eggs from the donor.  Please contact our friendly team at Eeve to discuss your requirements.

Donor eggs supplied to recipients from Eeve Donor Bank can be used within the City Fertility network of clinics including Rainbow Fertility.  They may not be used at a clinic outside of this network.

Seeing a Fertility Specialist is a very important step in your treatment. Both City Fertility and Rainbow Fertility take patient safety and patient outcomes very seriously.  Medical and fertility assessment needs to occur so that the most suitable treatment path can be determined and informed consent from all parties can be given.

Donors recruited after September 2019 now complete Extended Genetic Carrier Screening. If the donor is positive to one or more conditions, this does not mean the donor has the condition; merely that they are a carrier. Genetic carrier screening for sperm provider is required to ensure they are also not a carrier for the same condition. If both the sperm provider and the egg donor are both carriers of the same condition, there is a higher chance the child could be born with that genetic condition.

If the egg donor has a positive genetic carrier screen it does not mean that the donor has the condition, merely that they are a carrier.  If the sperm provider is also a carrier for the same condition, it increases the chance of a child being born with the genetic condition.

Recipients can reserve one allocation of six (6) to eight (8) eggs from one donor at a time.

We suggest you meet with a genetic counsellor who can guide you. If you do not currently have a genetic counsellor, we can refer you to some that we work closely with.

After you have seen your fertility specialist there will be steps that need to be completed with our donor team before you can move forward with reserving a donor. Steps to complete can be found here.

Local donors recruited through Egg Donors Australia, can donate their eggs if they meet these criteria:

• Aged 18-32 if clinic recruited.  Egg donors over 32 will not be accepted for clinic-recruited donations.
• Healthy with no history of genetic disease. Donors will not be accepted if they suffer from an illness, disease or inherited condition that can be passed on to a child conceived from their donation
• Donors who can provide their family medical history.  If married or in a de facto relationship, the partner must consent to the donation.
• Donors must have a permanent address and be contactable for follow-up medical tests. They are required to provide three identifiers and proof of a permanent address, e.g. driver’s licence, photo ID and passport.
• Clinic-recruited egg donors must be eligible for full Medicare benefits in Australia.

Overseas donors recruited through international donor banks can donate their eggs if they meet the following criteria:

• Women between ages 18-32
• Non-smoker
• No alcohol and/or drug abuse or addiction
• Good knowledge of medical and genetic history of family members up to biological grandparents (even if applicant is adopted, they must know this information)
• Cannot be on the following forms of birth control: Depo-Provera or Implanon/Nexplanon
• Healthy Body Mass Index
• Be willing to administer medications by injection (very small subcutaneous needles)

All egg donors are tested for infectious diseases and certain medical conditions before donations commence. Donors recruited after September 2019 now complete an Extended Genetic Carrier Screening test.

At the age of 18, any child born from donor gametes is entitled to know their genetic origin. Counselling is required before the donor’s identifying information is provided.

The donor’s availability list can change daily due to either all stock being exhausted or family limits being reached. Additionally, The World Egg and Sperm Bank refreshes their donor database every 24 hours, which means you may need to receive a confirmation from The World Egg and Sperm Bank to ensure your donor has been successfully reserved. Should your preferred donor be unavailable, our Central Donor Team will assist you find other suitable donors.

To avoid disappointment, it is important to place your reservation in a timely manner and complete all the steps required prior to purchase the donor.

Eggs and embryos are cryopreserved (frozen) using a special technique called “vitrification” which uses a rapid cooling process to reduce damage to the cell(s).  They are stored in liquid nitrogen at -196C. There is no evidence to show that shipping between clinics or from overseas will have any effect on egg or embryo quality. For more information, please contact our friendly team at contact@eevedonorbank.com.au

You can either download the app from your App Store (if you have an iPhone) or from Google Play if you have Android. Be sure to check the IOS app store or Google Play store for mobile device compatibility.

You can download our Eeve app from any device from Android, to iPhone. The only mobiles our app does not work on is for Microsoft devices. If you have a Microsoft phone, please note you can still navigate through our website and select donors you like – our website is mobile friendly and it has all the information you need to browse your favourite donors.

• A City Fertility nurse will follow up throughout your pregnancy. To ensure family limits are adhered to and are not breached, it is a legal requirement in Australia for any live birth created with donor gametes to be reported.
• In Victoria, births will be reported to VARTA
• In New South Wales births will be reported to the Ministry of Health.
• If an overseas egg donor was used, the live birth will be reported to the provider in addition to state reporting.
• In WA births will be reported to Reproductive Technology Counsil (RTC)

What if all stock of that donor has been exhausted, what are my options?

• If a local donor was used, we can reach out to them to see if they would be willing to re-donate.
• If your donor is from one of our overseas providers, we can reach out to the egg bank to see what remaining stock they have available.

Deleting an Eeve account is permanent. After going through the process, all of your preferred donors and matches will be erased.

To remove your Eeve account, simply email us at contact@eevedonorbank.com.au and we will send you an email within two (2) business days to confirm your account has been deleted successfully or it’s in the process of being removed.

If you are selecting frozen eggs, shipment typically take place within 3 weeks. If you select a donor that does not yet have banked eggs (fresh egg donors), it may take anywhere from 2-4 months to complete the IVF cycle and then for shipment to take place. We recommend not scheduling your procedures until after the eggs have arrived at your clinic.

The international donor banks only recruit donor donors who reside within the United states and Canada. Genesis International recruit donors who reside in Malaysia and Manor Medical recruit donors from the Ukraine and Georgia.

The amount of experience held by the person who vitrifies your gametes is critical. There is a learning curve associated with vitrification; due to the precision required when placing the gamete on the vitrification device, thousands of repetitions without distractions are crucial to consistently high-quality standards. The international donor banks, focus on only vitrifying gametes, and their embryologist have vitrified every gamete in their bank; that is over 10,000 gametes. Their results support our consistent and reliable gamete quality every day, all over the world.

The International Donor banks carefully controls the storage and shipment of gametes after they are vitrified. Moving gametes from a storage tank to a shipper is a delicate matter, as gametes can ‘warm’ within seconds. The International Donor banks ship your gametes once – directly to your clinic. There are no middlemen or distribution hubs. That may not be the case with gamete banks who outsource to affiliates. Instead, their gametes can be transferred from a retrieval clinic to a storage location and later transferred to the clinic of the intended parent. That is potentially three shipments and two transfers to storage tanks in the process of getting the gametes to your clinic.