Baby in a billion

A man who was told his chances of fathering a child were a billion to one was celebrating the birth of his daughter last week. John Buckland and his wife Laura underwent IVF treatment at the Bristol University Centre for Reproductive Medicine, and their baby Emily was born on 16 May.

Mr Buckland had been told he was sterile, as he had only 13 healthy sperm in 200 million. But doctors used ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) - the injection of a single sperm directly into an egg - to develop an embryo for the couple. Clinical manger Sue Ashcroft said the Buckland's case was probably the hardest they had ever dealt with. 'There were numerous miracles involved, not least the fact that we managed to extract any sperm at all' she added.

Mr Buckland was declared infertile after complications following an operation to correct undescended testicles. Dr Eileen McLaughlin, a lecturer at the centre, said that Mr Buckland's was an extreme case. 'There was a particularly low number of healthy sperm. It would have taken several hours to find them after biopsy' she said.