Embryo mixup at Israeli hospital: pregnant woman in 3rd trimester not the real mother

This isn’t the first time an embryo was misplaced at the hospital, according to a Channel 12 report.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel’s Health Ministry is forbidding a hospital from accepting new patients seeking in-vitro fertilization treatment due to a mixup of embryos, Channel 12 reported Saturday.

Assuta Medical Center, located in Rishon Letzion, south of Tel Aviv, discovered the error on Wednesday while conducting a genetic test on a pregnant woman. The fetus was not genetically matched to the woman or her partner, the doctors discovered.

At the end of two days of a comprehensive investigation, the list of potential mothers of the embryo was reduced to 10 women. The patient most likely to be the biological mother has been updated. She herself is not pregnant.

Assuta said that the health ministry is updated on all mapping processes and dialogue with patients, with full transparency as required.

According to the report, this apparently is not the first time that Assuta had erred in this regard. A woman told Channel 12 that the hospital had lost her embryo and she suspects it was transferred to another patient’s womb.