Could Singapore government consider providing financial assistance for egg freezing?

I READ with great interest The Business Times article titled “Can egg freezing help Singapore companies retain female talent?”

While I strongly support the writer’s proposal that private-sector employers should offer egg-freezing benefits to their female employees, this gesture might likely fall short.

Given the high costs of the procedure, such subsidies would probably be offered only to a select few high-value female employees at the upper management level, who would likely be older women with lower-quality eggs.

This problem was highlighted in a recent The Straits Times article, which reported that of over 800 women in Singapore who have frozen their eggs for non-medical reasons since 2023, 57 per cent of them were over 35 years of age. This means reduced egg quality for the majority of women undergoing the procedure, which might reduce their future chances of pregnancy.

It is likely that the high costs of egg freezing deter many younger women from undergoing the procedure when their egg quality is optimal. To overcome this problem, the Singapore government could consider various means of providing financial assistance for elective egg freezing. Most obvious of these are direct government subsidies for egg freezing. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, for instance, have started to subsidise the procedure for their female citizens.

Many Singaporean women would likely appreciate such assistance. Besides enabling more equitable access, it would also boost the country's birth rate.

Another option might be to permit the use of Central Provident Fund (CPF) MediSave for elective egg freezing, similar to how it is allowed for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment in Singapore. Many single women would likely want to use their CPF MediSave money to fund the procedure, as it is highly expensive.

The government could also consider providing low-interest-rate loans to women freezing their eggs, similar to current government loans for university tuition fees and public housing that are pegged to CPF interest rates

Finally, a more radical option may be to consider permitting "Freeze and Share" schemes, whereby infertile IVF patients heavily subsidise the medical fees of egg-freezing patients who agree to donate some of their eggs (before freezing) in exchange.

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This scheme, already operating in countries such as the US and the UK, would incur no additional costs to government coffers as subsidies come directly from recipient patients. It could also help overcome the persistent shortage of egg donors in Singapore. Alexis Heng, associate professor, Peking University