Tourist? Medical tourist!
Lastly medical tourism became so popular and important direction of tourism, that almost all countries of modern Europe are trying to get into this interesting niche and suggest the best they can in the field of medical services. Stem cells therapies, organ transplantation, cancer treatment, IVF treatment, plastic surgery and even dentistry are fighting for international clients nowadays. And it is quite understandable, because first of all, not all this practices are allowed in the country of the patient’s origin and secondly, the difference in price for treatment and medications can be perceivable. All this makes such trips abroad for treatment very attractive for international patients from both economical and medical point of view. Such trips are frequently associated by patients with their last hope to succeed in their treatment.
We, as a company, that works with International patients with infertility, want to share our experience about the level of the medical services, provided in few popular destinations for IVF treatment and surrogacy.
All information in this article should be considered as our personal opinion, based on our own experience and cannot be taken by anybody as the absolute truth. But we really believe that for somebody who is searching for the best options of treatment this knowledge could be quite helpful.
Surrogacy in Albania
Location for European tourists: 10 from 10
IVF and Surrogacy: not regulated
Egg Donors: not regulated
Requirements for couples for Surrogacy: not regulated
Transparency of the clinic’s work: 5 from 10
Medical facilities and technology available: 5 from 10
Maternity houses and NICU departments: 5 from 10
Maternal mortality rate: 29 deaths per 100,000 live births
Children’s mortality rate (infants under-5): 8.8 per 1000 live births
Corruption level: High
Epidemiological situation in the country: Average
A completely new and growing destination of medical tourism is IVF and Surrogacy tourism in Albania. Lastly in Internet numerous surrogacy agencies appeared, that are offering such services for European tourists. However, investigating the legal background of such activity, we didn’t come to any final conclusion about legality of this kind of treatment. Moreover, lack of information about practical implementation of such procedures raise reasonable doubts in transparency of work of clinics and agencies, who offer surrogacy programs there.
Legislation
The only one mentioning about surrogacy in Albanian legislation appears in article 261 of the Family Code, where it is written that surrogacy adoption applies for the same rules, as adoption in general. From this statement, we can make a conclusion that in the end of any surrogacy program an adoption procedure is needed, which includes obtaining of the Adoption Committee’s consent for the adoption and the court hearing.
This will not give ability for families who have used surrogacy services to travel home very fast after the baby’s birth. Besides, the adoption of a child (it doesn’t matter if the baby is born via surrogacy or not) is possible by spouses, one of the spouses with the written consent of the other spouse or by individuals. It will be not possible to adopt a baby by same-sex couple or a couple without marriage, because Albanian authorities adhere to the principle of best child’s interests and they do not consider such couples as stable families for children’s growth and development.
The other problem is that there are no other provisions about surrogacy in Albanian legislation at all. The Law on Reproductive health is also written in a very general way and doesn’t have clear provisions even about the egg donation. Despite this fact, a lot of IVF clinics provide such services as IVF with egg donation and surrogacy in Albania due to the parents’ requests.
Be aware
The only one document, that will regulate relationships between the Intended Parents and the Surrogate mother is the surrogacy agreement. Nevertheless, it is not clear if such agreement could be enforced in future, for example if the surrogate mother decides to keep the baby. Furthermore, as there is no established procedure for obtaining the birth certificate in case of the birth of baby via surrogacy, we can only presume that the civil birth certificate is given on the name of the woman, who delivered a baby (the surrogate mother), and either on the name of the genetic father of the child, either on the name of the surrogate’s spouse.
We strongly recommend you to contact lawyer in Albania before undergoing surrogacy program there due to numerous legal gaps. We believe that it is very important clearly understand the whole process step by step before taking a decision to have any kind of infertility treatment abroad.
Have more questions? Contact us via e-mail!
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