Animation | Womb transplant gets UK go-ahead, here’s how it works

After a successful womb transplant operation took place in Sweden last year, 10 British women without wombs will also be given a chance to undergo the operation in a clinical trial.

The ten British women will be selected if they are under 38, are of healthy weights and have long term partners. Before the trial starts, embryos will be created and frozen from the women's eggs and the sperm of their partner. The women will then undergo six-hour procedures to receive wombs from donors who are declared brain dead but still have beating hearts. The women will then be placed on immunosuppressant drugs for 12 months before the embryos can be implanted and the babies will be delivered by caesarean section to avoid placing strain of labor on their new wombs.

If the trial is successful, the first British baby from a womb transplant mother will be born in late 2017 or 2018.