A TOURISM website launched a weeklong egg-freezing package tour to the United States, which is priced at 218,888 yuan (US$31,751), the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday. The package has attracted a number of local women to freeze their eggs in the United States.

Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, is a process in which a woman’s oocytes are extracted, frozen and stored as a method to preserve reproductive potential in women of reproductive age.

Xu Jinglei, a renowned Chinese actress, had nine of her oocytes frozen in America in 2015 when she was 39. She said that freezing oocytes are the only “medicine for regret” in the world in an interview.

According to the tourism website, the trip in America consists of two parts — a package tour and an egg-freezing operation. The cost of the egg-freezing process is around US$8,000, which covers the patient’s flight tickets, travel expenses and all of the medical fees in America.

The cost of egg freezing in China is cheaper than that in the United States. In Shenzhen, the medical fees for an egg-freezing operation are about 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, according to the report.

The tourism website launched the package tour in cooperation with ivfusa.com, a medical counseling website. Zhang Xin, founder of ivfusa.com, said that many women in Shenzhen, most of them entrepreneurs, had traveled to the United States to freeze their eggs.

A woman, who declined to be named, said that the egg freezing process in America only takes a week, which didn’t influence her work at all. She wanted to preserve her eggs when she was in the best shape to ensure the health of her next generation. She said that it’s easier to do egg freezing in America as a single woman because she doesn’t have to provide so many documents.

A doctor at Luohu Hospital’s reproductive department, surnamed Fu, said that it is better for a woman to freeze her eggs before she is 35 years old, otherwise her ovary functions would be in decline and the quality of her oocytes would decrease, resulting in a lower success rate for developing her oocytes into embryos.

According to Fu, women are advised to have their frozen eggs thawed within five years, because the thawing rate will be lower if they wait longer. She said that 10 to 20 oocytes are extracted from a woman’s ovary during the egg freezing operation, but repeated operations would damage a woman’s ovary function and lead to symptoms of menopause.

According to the report, it’s legal for hospitals in Shenzhen to provide egg freezing services for women as long as the hospitals have reproductive centers that are supervised by the government.

However, single women in China are not allowed to have egg freezing operations, according to China’s existing laws. Although some hospitals allow single women to freeze their oocytes, they have to provide marriage certificates and family planning certificates before thawing their frozen eggs.

Tian Xinyi, a senior manager of the product operation department of huize.com, an insurance service website, said that there wasn’t medical insurance for patients wanting to freeze their eggs overseas. She said that women should consider the potential risks before going to America for an egg freezing operation. (Zhang Yang)