Vietnam accepts first 10 surrogacy requests under revised law   This file photo shows a doctor examining a pregnant woman at Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Tuoi Tre Nearly 100 applications for surrogacy have been sent to three designated hospitals, ten of which have met the required conditions, over the past three days after Vietnam’s new regulation on surrogacy on humanitarian grounds took effect, the Ministry of Health has said. The new regulation is part of the revised Law on Marriage and Family that came into force on Mach 15, allowing people to act or have others act as surrogate mothers for humanitarian purposes on a voluntary basis after satisfying certain requirements, the ministry said. The three major clinics assigned by the ministry to handle surrogacy cases are the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Hanoi, the Hue Central Hospital in the central city of Hue, and Tu Du Obstetrics Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, said Nguyen Viet Tien, Deputy Minister of Health.  So far, ten of the surrogacy applications sent to the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology have met the requirements for surrogacy under the new regulation, the ministry said.   Accordingly, these ten surrogacy cases have become the first to be approved in Vietnam, the ministry added. Before the Law on Marriage and Family was amended last year, many infertile couples had to go abroad to have others act as surrogate mothers at a very high cost, Deputy Minister Tien said. Therefore, the new regulation is a humanitarian one that gives childless couples the opportunity to have children, the official said. About 500-700 couples have the need for others to act as surrogate mothers in Vietnam every year, according to national broadcaster Vietnam Television.   A surrogacy is a case in which the embryo of a biological child of a woman and her spouse is implanted into the uterus of the recipient after it is created through the in-vitro fertility technique, the ministry said. Hospitals that can perform the in-vitro fertility technique are fully capable of handling surrogacy cases, Deputy Minister Tien said. Under the new regulation, surrogacy is allowed when the woman who has found another woman to act as a surrogate mother has no uterus, has a deformed uterus that is unable to bear a fetus, or has had her uterus cut off.      Surrogacy is also allowed when a woman suffers health problems that can endanger her life and the fetus if she gets pregnant, or when a woman has undergone repeated miscarriages or has repeatedly failed to get pregnant despite the support of reproductive assistance techniques. TUOI TRE NEWS