Hospital representatives attend the inauguration of the workstation. [Photo/CQHCWC]

The Chongqing Health Center for Women and Children (Women and Children's Hospital of Chongqing Medical University), or CQHCWC, in Southwest China's Chongqing, has taken the lead in establishing an infertility specialist workstation alliance to promote the sharing of high-quality medical resources and offer better services to patients struggling with infertility.

As of the end of 2022, the alliance spans 36 hospitals from 22 counties and cities in Chongqing and other areas of Southwest China. Members are provided with regular training, online consultations, remote guidance, expert visits, and medical record sharing.

In 2022, the alliance organized more than 50 expert consultations and over 60 specialist training sessions. Hospitals that are part of the alliance have offered consultations to more than 1,000 patients and referrals to nearly 200 patients. This has allowed the patients to receive high-quality assisted reproductive diagnosis and treatment services.

Last year, the Reproductive Medicine Center of the CQHCWC also helped alliance members to establish several homogeneous infertility specialist outpatient clinics and andrology laboratories. This has effectively improved infertility diagnosis and treatment quality, while also raising the technical level of medical workers.

Brief introduction to the Reproductive Medicine Center of the CQHCWC

The Reproductive Medicine Center of the CQHCWC is the first reproductive center in the country to be approved by the former Ministry of Health – now the National Health Commission – to carry out human-assisted reproductive technology. It is also one of the few assisted reproductive technology training bases in the country.

The center was the first in West China to facilitate pregnancy through in vitro fertilization (IVF), and the first to utilize intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) technology.

It ranked seventh among Chinese hospitals in terms of reproductive medicine from 2017 to 2021, according to a list compiled by the Hospital Management Institute of Fudan University.

Its academic leader, Professor Huang Guoning, is the current chairman of the Reproductive Medicine Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, as well as the chief medical expert of Chongqing.

Since the birth of the first "test-tube baby" in western China in 1997, the Reproductive Medicine Center of the CQHCWC has attached great importance to sci-tech innovation and offering better services to patients. It is also continuously improving its clinical and experimental technologies.

The center has been recognized as the Chongqing Reproductive Health and Infertility Medical Quality Control Center, the Chongqing Reproductive Medicine Clinical Medical Research Center, and the Chongqing Key Laboratory for Human Embryo Engineering.

To date, the Reproductive Medicine Center of the CQHCWC has provided training to over 200,000 medical workers, and helped birth to more than 60,000 "test-tube babies". Its clinical pregnancy rate is stable at over 60 percent, and its live birth rate remains at more than 50 percent – among the highest in the nation.