CULLED FROM NEWSHEREANDTHERE MAGAZINE
In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is one of the available several techniques that enable people with fertility problems have a baby.
During IVF, an egg is removed from the woman’s ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. The fertilised egg, called an embryo, is then returned to the woman’s womb to grow and develop.
In this Interview with News Here and There Magazine, Dr. Adebayo Adeniyi a Consultant at Federal Teaching Hospital, Ido Ekiti, Associate Professor, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti and also the Medical Director of Olive Facility Centre highlights the impact the IVF has had in safeguarding Marriages to prevent Divorce that could arise in homes over Childlessness.
How effective is IVF ?
IVF is basically for people who can’t conceive. IVF is a solution to major problem in African women or in African couples all over the world and more so, in our environment where childbearing is a major important issue.
It has established solutions to save marriages from collapse. In our centre, in the last one or two years, many couples who would have ordinarily divorced or separated because of unfruitful childbearing, you can hear their testimonies when their babies are born.
Babies born from IVF are like unification to marriages, it makes the marriage to blossom again. So, without mincing words, IVF has come as a solution to marriage collapse.
The only challenge we have now is that it’s not all couples who can afford it. We are trying to see how we can reduce the cost and that is why in one of my news Interviews , i discussed how we can see the facilities to tackle this disease at a lower cost, people think it’s only diabetes and others are major diseases, but I can tell you that the inability for a woman to conceive is also a disease.
We are trying to see how we stakeholders in the health sector system can see the fertility as a major health challenges that actually needs the attention in order to reduce the cost and create access to IVF.
By doing this, it will save many more couples from marriage collapse or already collapsed marriages so that after IVF, they come together again because the major problem we have now is that they could not conceive but now that they are conceived, the problem is over.
Why is IVF costly?
IVF is expensive because It’s a capital intensive program, setting up an IVF centre is very expensive. The equipments are very expensive; I am talking about the standard one that can stand the test of time. Again, the consumables are very expensive, the technological know-how is also expensive, and most people who do it this time are business people and every business man wants to make gains from their business. They are all expensive, at least for now maybe until when the things that make it more expensive are more available, we can sing a new song.
Another one is that most of the drugs are imported, we don’t produce the drugs and the materials here in the country and everything depends on the up and down of the dollar.
Despite the expensiveness of the IVF, we do hear cases of failure. Why is it not automatically successful?
Actually, getting pregnant itself is not something that can be assured of high success in a natural way. Let’s assume the husband is 100% fine, and the wife too, the chance that a woman will get pregnant in a month when she copulate with her husband is 25%. That’s natural, that means pregnancy itself is stingy, now when you juxtapose that with IVF, IVF is even better than that because its chances is higher. Most IVF now range from 30, 40% or even higher than that, so, it’s still more effective than the natural method.
Are there any side effects in the successful ones?
After the woman has conceived through IVF, the following process is like a natural way of getting pregnant. We now ask ourselves, do naturally conceived women have abortions? Yes, they do. Do they have complications, yes, they do. So, if they can, IVF beneficiaries are not immune to such complications.
Is it possible for IVF beneficiaries to develop health challenges after process as a result of the IVF done?
It’s not common, we give drugs to them so that they can produce more eggs, there are some theoretical risks that we take which people think they might work against the ovaries but the reports we have had have not been in that line. The side effects have not been really significant especially when the normal protocols are followed and are done in a standard centre. There could be issues of pain during the procedure but after the whole process, everything becomes normal.
The difference among naturally babies and IVF babies are not much significant, but as I said, there may be theoretical side effects that we think will occur.