Singapore, May 23 (AFP): A childless Chinese couple’s prayers for a baby have been answered, thanks to a woman in India who rented her womb to them for about $ 6,600 (over Rs 3 lakh), a report said today.

Indian doctors implanted an embryo formed from the man’s sperm and his wife’s egg into the surrogate mother’s uterus and she carried the foetus for a full term, the Straits Times reported.

The surrogate mother gave birth to a baby boy on Friday at a Mumbai hospital. The baby was immediately handed over to the Chinese couple, permanent residents of Singapore, who had flown there to get the child.

The couple, in their mid-30s, could not conceive because of the wife’s medical problems.

They tried in-vitro fertilisation five times before turning to the prospect of a surrogate birth in India, where the process is much cheaper than in the US, the report said.

Gautam Allahbadia, chief consultant at the Dr I.H. Hiranandani Centre for Human Reproduction in Mumbai, told the newspaper that his hospital advertised for a surrogate mother in local dailies on behalf of the couple as such women are “always in short supply”.

A housewife and mother of two answered the advertisement, saying she would use the fee to pay for her own children’s education.

Allahbadia said the newborn is genetically Chinese and looks like his genetic mother. The couple is having a DNA check to ensure that theirs matched with that of the baby before flying back.