Making a Donor Selection

At Outreach Health Services, our goal is to help you through the donor selection process as easily as possible, ensuring you also have the information necessary to make an informed choice for your selection. Considerations for the best donor sperm for your family include the donor’s: blood type, colouring, height, and comprehensive family medical history. We also ensure CMV status and high-quality screening of our donor specimens. We are available to review the sperm donor profiles with you, and assist you with any questions you may have prior to ordering. We also offer on-site and web consultations.

Donor Listings

To view the current listings of donor's please click on the links below.

To order, please call our convenient toll-free number: 1-866-785-4709, or email us at info [at] creatingcanadianfamilies [dot] ca.

Choosing a Donor Blood Type

Blood type is not as important if you plan on telling your children about the use of a donor. If you are not certain, or have decided you will not disclose this information, we would encourage you to match blood type with that of your male partner. This should be discussed with your physician.

Blood type of the donor is medically important to women who are Rh negative (Rh). These women may develop antibodies to a fetus that is Rh positive. There is a 50 to 100 percent chance of having an Rh-positive fetus if the semen donor is Rh positive. The importance of this possibility should be discussed with your physician.

To choose a blood type that would match husband's blood type:

If the couple's blood types are:	The donor's blood type may be:
A and A	A or O
A and B	Any type
A and O	A or O
B and B	B or O
B and O	B or O
O and O	Must be O

If the wife is AB and her partner is:	The donor may be:
A	Any type
B	Any type
O	Must be O
AB	Any type

If her partner is AB and the wife is:	The donor may be:
A	AB but not O *
B	AB but not O *
O	AB but not O *
AB	any type

* Blood type A or blood type B could be used. However, if both the donor and the recipient contribute the gene for blood type O to the child, the child will have blood type O. This outcome would not be possible with a partner who has blood type AB.

CHOOSING A DONOR GROUP

Create a donor group code by selecting one letter from each of the following 3 selections or by using the sort feature on the donor listings.

Colouring

Dark Hair Black, Dark Brown, Medium Brown, Light Brown, and Auburn

Light Hair Lightest Brown, Blonde (all shades), and Reds

Dark Eyes Black, Dark Brown, and Light Brown

Light Eyes Blue, Green, Grey, Hazel

CMV Status

Although not mandated by Health Canada, all Outreach Health Services donors must be IgM negative, indicating no current infection for Cytomegalovirus. Donors who are IgG positive have been exposed at some point in their life to Cytomegalovirus. It is estimated that a majority of the population has been exposed to Cytomegalovirus, often in childhood.

Avoidance of Transmissible Disease

As concerned Canadian distributors, we ensure our suppliers use their best efforts to protect recipients and their offspring from infectious diseases and to avoid transmitting genetic diseases. They follow screening and testing guidelines established by authoritative sources, including Health Canada, European Society for Human Reproduction & Embryology (ESHRE), an in-house medical advisory board in New York State, and others. This includes an initial physical examination on each donor, a specimen quarantine period and many laboratory tests repeated throughout the year on each donor.

Despite this intensive screening and quarantine process, we cannot guarantee that donor sperm is free of infectious or genetic disease. Testing is limited to diseases specified in the Donor Screening Guide, available to all recipients and their physicians. Evaluation for other specific diseases is available upon request at additional cost. The inherent, though minimal, inaccuracies of many laboratory tests do not allow exclusion of such risks, even when a test has been performed. However, the repetitive and strict nature of the process is intended to produce the safest product possible.