PA
Cash-strapped women are selling their eggs to a fertility clinic for £750 a time to beat the recession.
Women are so keen to capitalise on their eggs that a clinic in Manchester has reported it has no waiting list for treatment for the first time in its history.
Manchester Fertility Services at the Bridgewater Hospital in Moss Side said this was 'amazing news' for couples trying for a family.
More couples are also going through the egg-sharing programme, where a woman receives a cycle of IVF at a subsidised rate in return for donating half of her eggs retrieved during treatment.
The clinic's Gidon Lieberman told the Manchester Evening News: "The fact that we now have donors ready and waiting is amazing news for the many couples who need donor eggs to get pregnant."
He said the reason for the surge in egg donors was because of changes to compensation rules that came in in April. This increased the payment per donation from £250 to £750.
"The compensation increase was designed to properly compensate women for the time, commitment and invasive nature of being an egg donor, and it's definitely raised awareness of the need for donors and boosted applications," said Mr Lieberman.
"That, combined with the sheer number of women we have taking part in our egg-sharing programme – currently around 68 per cent of our egg-sharers get pregnant from their subsidised IVF cycle – means we have, for the first time, no waiting list for treatment with donor eggs."
Typically in Britain women who need donor eggs have either had to join long waiting lists for treatment due to a lack of donors, or been forced abroad for treatment where donor eggs are more readily available because of higher payments to women for their eggs and the guarantee of anonymity for donors.