Egg Donation - Types of Donors

Types of Donors

Donors includes the following types:

• Donors unrelated to the recipients who do it for altruistic or monetary reasons. They are often anonymous donors typically recruited by egg donor agencies or, sometimes, IVF programs.
• Designated donors, e.g. a friend or relative brought by the patients to serve as a donor specifically to help them. In Sweden, couples who can bring such a donor still get another person as a donor, but instead get advanced on the waiting list for the procedure, and that donor rather becomes a "cross donor".
• Patients taking part in shared oocyte programmes. Women who go through in vitro fertilization may be willing to donate unused eggs to such a program, where the egg recipients together help paying the cost of the In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) procedure. It is very cost-effective compared to other alternatives. The pregnancy rates with use of shared oocytes is similar to that with altruistic donors.