The baby boy, weighing a healthy 3.46 kg, is the first child to be born thorough IVF at a government hospital in the Capital.

This is being considered a major milestone, as the expensive IVF procedure, which costs close to Rs one lakh, had so far been available only in private hospitals.

Doctors at AIIMS said they expect many more babies, conceived through IVF last year, to be born in the coming days. “She was lucky to conceive early. We expect many more babies now,” said Dr Sunita Mittal, who heads the IVF facility at AIIMS.

While the couple was reluctant to be named, sources said they had been married for four years and conceived through IVF in August last year.

The facility was started at AIIMS in May last year, after the hospital set up a state-of-the-art assisted conception facility. T

o bring down costs, AIIMS had decided to charge patients only for disposables and extras.

AIIMS was the first government medical centre in Delhi to provide IVF treatment and other procedures, such as Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), Assisted Hatching and Embryo Cryopreservation, but these facilities are now also available at the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) Hospital.

In the IVF procedure, egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside a woman’s womb.