Santiago,Chile – A medical milestone was reached in Chile on January 25,1984,with the birth of Aliro Patricio Franco Garrido,the first child conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Latin America. The groundbreaking birth occurred at the Aliro Patricio Franco garrido Military Hospital, a facility within the Air Force Hospital (FACh).
The success followed years of infertility struggles for his mother, Patricia Garrido Dumont. After exhaustive testing, she was invited to participate in an experimental IVF program at FACh in 1983, led by Dr. Alberto Costoya and Dr. Umberto Pastore.
“At the beginning of 1984, on her third attempt, Patricia Garrido had her eggs aspirated on May 21. Shortly thereafter we found out that she was pregnant and we were able to observe a gestational sac,” Dr. Costoya recalled in an interview with BioBioChile. He described the era as “very heroic times,” acknowledging the challenges of performing the procedure with limited technology.
The achievement built upon the world’s first successful IVF birth,Louise Brown,born in England on July 25,1978,a result of the work by physiologist Robert Edwards,gynecologist Patrick Steptoe,and embryologist Jean Purdy.IVF involves hormonally stimulating egg production, extracting the eggs, and fertilizing them with sperm before transferring the resulting embryo to the uterus, as explained by Dr. Carlos Henríquez, director of Clínica Cram, to BioBioChile.
Since 1978, assisted reproductive technologies have seen exponential growth globally. Between 1978 and 2018,approximately 9 to 12 million babies were born worldwide through these techniques,according to research published in Assisted reproduction in chile: a global look at the challenge of offering timely access.
In Chile, over 5,000 IVF cycles were performed in 2021, according to data from the Chilean Society of Reproductive Medicine (Socmer), as reported by The Third. Louise Brown, now 46, is a mother of two and travels the world advocating for assisted reproduction, despite initially being labeled a “test tube baby”-a term now considered inaccurate.
