Danish authority admits gaps in sperm bank oversight

The Danish Patient Safety Authority has acknowledged that it failed to inspect sperm banks in cases where the law required it to do so, DR reports. Health Minister Ida Auken has requested a third report on the authority’s oversight of fertility services.

The authority made the admission in a letter to Auken. It said it viewed the missed inspections “with great seriousness”. The state’s lawyer, Kammeradvokaten, will provide external legal assistance in preparing the new report, which must assess whether the lack of inspections affected patient safety.

Auken said she was “deeply unsatisfied” and had asked for a thorough account to establish the full extent of the problem. The authority must submit the report by the end of January next year. Auken has also called the health spokespeople of the political parties to a briefing.

The latest admission follows DR reports about Danish sperm donor “Kjeld”, whose sperm resulted in around 200 children in 14 countries. Unbeknown to him, he passed on a serious inherited TP53 gene mutation to some of them. The mutation was discovered in 2023, but many women who had conceived using his sperm were not warned of the risk to their children until the case became public last year.

Rules require the authority to inspect a sperm bank when a donor is found to have a serious inherited disease after his sperm has been sold. The authority said it realised it had not carried out those inspections after DR asked how it followed up on sperm banks’ reports of serious inherited diseases.

The case has also raised questions about checks on the number of children conceived using each donor. A donor’s sperm may be sold for use by no more than 12 women in Denmark. DR previously reported that European Sperm Bank had sold sperm from 81 donors for use by more women than allowed.

The authority had told DR that it checked donor child numbers through sample checks during routine inspections. But it later said it could not document that those checks had been conducted at European Sperm Bank. In a report submitted on September 25, it said records showed sample checks during routine inspections in only three cases since 2013.

The authority’s earlier reports to the minister were prompted by DR’s coverage of the donor case and the checks at sperm banks and fertility clinics. The new report will examine the authority’s own inspection practices.