Gujarat High Court orders hospital to collect, store sperm of man dying from COVID on plea by wife who wants to conceive child

The Gujarat High Court, on Tuesday, directed Sterling Hospital, Vadodara to extract and store the sperm of a man dying from COVID-19, in response to a plea by his wife who expressed desire to bear his child..Justice Ashutosh J Shastri passed an interim order in favour of the petitioner, directing the hospital to collect the patient’s sample by way of IVF/ART procedure and appropriately store the same as per medical advice till the matter is decided on merits."The respondent No.2 is directed to conduct IVF/ART procedure for collection of samples from the body of Shri Dhruv Kumar Patel, the husband of petitioner No.1 and the said sample shall be stored at an appropriate place as per the medical advice," the Court ordered. The petitioners, who are the wife and parents of the dying patient, sought the patient’s sperm in order to conceive his child through IVF/Assisted Reproductive Technology..The hospital initially refused this request citing that the express consent of the doner is necessary, and the same can only be waived based on a Court order. This refusal by the hospital was based on Section 22 of the pending Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill that mandates written, informed consent for any procedure involving assisted reproductive technology..Therefore, the petitioners moved the High Court through advocate Nilay H. Patel in an urgent petition that was circulated at 2:30 PM keeping in view the extraordinary circumstances and the matter came to be heard at 4PM on Tuesday..The Court then passed an interim order directing the hospital to collect and safely store the sperm until the matter was adjudicated based on the contentions of all parties.“This 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 added. .Considering the urgency of the matter, the petitioner was allowed to communicate the order to the Hospital telephonically and the Assistant Government Pleader Aishwarya Gupta was also directed to communicate the order to the hospital..The matter will be heard further on 23 July..[Read Order]