Debated in Parliament on 29 Feb 2024.
Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Health whether he can provide an update on (i) the pilot for Pre-Implantation Genetic Screening (PGS) and (ii) when PGS can be included as a mainstream healthcare service.
Mr Speaker, under the Ministry of Health's (MOH’s) pilot on Pre-implantation Genetic Screening (PGS), any woman enrolled in an accredited in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) programme, who is 35 years and above, who has suffered two or more recurrent implantation failures, or experienced two or more pregnancy losses, is eligible for PGS. This is to improve IVF success rates.
As of January 2024, 590 patients were enrolled to the study but only 195 patients had undergone PGS. Of which, 131 completed their embryo transfers. This has led to 70 pregnancies with 56 live births and five ongoing pregnancies. More patients need to be recruited into the pilot for a robust evaluation of the clinical efficacy of PGS, before it can be determined if PGS can be a mainstream clinical service. In the meantime, PGS will remain accessible to eligible patients.
Mr Ng.
I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the reply. I think this pilot has been going on for about seven years now. So, I am just wondering when the study will finally come to an end. Is there a specific number of patients which we need to go to this study before we can consider ending the study and nationalising PGS?
Second, could I also asked whether the MOH is looking into expanding this to the private sector as well, where the private assisted reproduction (AR) clinics can also be part of this study, so that we can finally reach that number of patients that we are hoping to?
I thank Member for his questions and his interest in this matter. Firstly, I think as a matter of point on the numbers, I think the Member has asked some questions on this previously and we have indicated that a number of 300 will be a good reference. However, as you can see, over time, we have worked on trying to increase the numbers and there are enrolments. The problem is not all then follow through with the process, for many different reasons. And because of that, we have not yet achieved that number for a good statistical reference.
Secondly, this is also something that the Member has raised earlier about the extension to the private AR centres. And this is something that we are reviewing and we are looking into. The fact remains that right now the PGS remains accessible to people and experts in the private centres can make referrals to the three AR centres and in the public setting.
As a matter of principle, I also want to highlight that there exists an infinite number of tests and screens that are available for many different conditions, including this one. Just because early detection may be valuable for certain circumstances, this does not mean we should deploy all of them and we should subsidise all of them. So, this is something we do need to take into consideration. It is not just an issue of cost. It is also an issue of the side effects and some negative detrimental effects that may come. In this particular case, as we understand, there are some side effects that may happen to the blastocyst. So, we do need to consider this and we need to take into account all these factors before we can decide to mainstream this.
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