Milvia in the Press

As a new fertility concierge service launches in the capital, aimed at high net worth overseas customers, Charlotte Lytton asks, is blurring the lines between hope and profit ever ethical?

More and more women, including many Americans, are traveling there to undergo a procedure known as oocyte vitrification due to the high cost of doing so in their own country

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Rika Tajima, a 34-year-old woman from Japan, about her journey to travel to London, where she froze her eggs.

Faced with the high cost of egg-freezing in their home countries, some women are going abroad for a better deal, and a vacation.

They choose to cross the Atlantic and travel thousands of kilometers in search of prices up to four times lower to freeze their eggs.

Milvia is a company focused on making egg freezing more accessible by bringing women to places where the procedure is cheaper. They arrange the trip—from their flights to their hormonal medication to their doctor’s appointments.

It’s hardly uncommon for Americans to travel to London over the summer, where they watch tennis at Wimbledon, say, or take pictures of Big Ben or dine on Champagne and scones at Claridge’s.

Milvia's mission is to make egg freezing affordable by transporting women to areas where the treatment is less expensive.

According to Grand View Search, a market research firm, the global fertility tourism market, including people traveling to the United States, is expected to grow by 30% over the next seven years, becoming a $6.2 billion industry by 2030.