Doctors at GG Hospital, Chennai brought first Indian frozen egg cell baby into this world on Wednesday. The baby boy, weighing 2.5 kg was born after an elective caesarean in the 36th week of pregnancy. The mother was healthy and will be nursing the baby from Thursday. This incidence has given hope to many childless couples.

Frozen egg cell procedure is an artificial reproduction method. In this method the egg cells from a woman are frozen and later fertilized to yield a foetus. However in this case a frozen egg cell from a donor was fertilized with his father's sperm cell. It was then implanted in the mother.

Frozen egg method is not a very popular because of its low success rate of one percent. Dr Priya Selvaraj, who performed the caesarean said, "Unlike other in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures which have a success rate of 30 to 35 per cent this one results only in 1 per cent success."

She added, "Oocyte is a specialized cell and extremely sensitive to the freezing and thawing process. The structural integrity of the cell has to be maintained throughout the cryopreservation process. But the advantage with this technique is that we can avoid multiple births that occur when frozen embryos are used as there is only one egg and one sperm used in the process."

However this method can be blessing for women suffering from cancer. Such women can freeze their eggs before going for chemotherapy. Chemotherapy can kill egg cells. This method can help those women who want to delay their pregnancy due to some reason. Their eggs can be preserved when they are young which can be used in later years.