LHSC fertility clinic to close after five decades of growing families

One of Canada's first fertility clinics is closing in March after 50 years of helping families grow. 

The Fertility Clinic at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) has helped bring more than 4,500 babies into the world since opening its doors in 1972. Fertility patients at the clinic will transfer to Omega Fertility Center, a community-based clinic set to open a new facility in London this spring or summer. 

The Omega clinic at 373 Commissioners Rd. W. will be run by a team of physicians currently working at LHSC in obstetrics and gynecology. There is no firm date for when the new facility will open, LHSC confirmed. 

"There is a gap that our services stop, and Omega will start, and then patients will then just transition over," said Nash Syed, president of the Children's Hospital at LHSC. He said patients could call the centre to help navigate timelines or connect with other centres in the interim.

"By having services in the community, they don't need to be in the hospital [and] can successfully run in an innovative, patient-centred environment. It makes sense to have it within the community," Syed said. 

Most fertility clinics in Ontario operate in the community and offer both ministry-funded fertility treatments and self-pay services, he said. The fertility clinic at LHSC is one of two hospital-based fertility clinics in the province. 

In-hospital fertility clinics closed at times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic creating "a barrier to care," he said. "While it was needed, one of the things that we would not want to have happen ever in the future is that services aren't available."

The clinic offers reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), intrauterine insemination (IUI), donor insemination (DI), and fertility preservation and oncofertility preservation that preserves eggs or sperm before a patient has cancer treatment.

LHSC is working with Omega Fertility Center to finalize the safe transfer of information, equipment, embryos and sperm.

Omega Fertility Clinic has been operating in London since 2018 and currently runs a clinic at 555 Southdale Rd. E. in London, which will move to the Commissioners Road location.

"Patients are welcome to attend the clinic currently located on Southdale Road, prior to the new clinic location opening," LHSC confirmed in an email. 

Syed is confident the same care patients received in hospital will continue at the community-based clinic. 

"The clinic has done a fantastic job. The people at the clinic have done a wonderful job, and where we think that that will continue on," he said.