Record test-tube baby ends 5-year childlessness

Hours and a caesarean section later, Baby Sharon came squealing from her mother’s womb, ending the couple’s five years without a child. [Name is changed for privacy concerns]One month later, Pam is already into the hassles of motherhood, bundling her baby off to see a paediatrician for the baby’s diarrhoea.“We are fulfilled, happy,” says Pam, […]

Hours and a caesarean section later, Baby Sharon came squealing from her mother’s womb, ending the couple’s five years without a child. [Name is changed for privacy concerns]
One month later, Pam is already into the hassles of motherhood, bundling her baby off to see a paediatrician for the baby’s diarrhoea.
“We are fulfilled, happy,” says Pam, a wide-eyed Sharon cradled against her left shoulder. “We had a goal and we were able to achieve it. Some people did it and it didn’t work for them. So we have reasons to be happy, and it is not as if we did anything extra. It is the same procedure but with the help of God.”
Sharon’s birth at Garki Hospital Abuja is a record for a hospital that’s become more known as Nigeria’s first experiment in public-private partnership.
Garki drew down an IVF programme from its parent hospital Nisa Premier with hopes of reducing treatment cost to promo prices of around N700,000 on average since last February – down from possibly over N1 million.
Since then, some 80 women have become part of the programme, which runs IVF clinics three hours every Tuesday.
What would have been the first live birth was terminated when a Sokoto-based patient pregnant with twins miscarried after four months.
Sharon is the first live birth so far, and could be a poster child for couples wishing for a child and for the IVF community to claim the treatment is affordable and available in Nigeria.
Pam and her husband underwent general fertility treatment before finally deciding on IVF.
“We did all the tests that are necessary to know where the problem lies. Drugs were prescribed; we took them and there was no change,” she said.
IVF becomes as option when drugs seem to fail. “We see many conditions and sometimes drugs may not be able to take care of it, if they have blocked tubes,” said Dr Kayode Obende, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, who delivered Sharon last December.
For some women, age is a problem when they are beyond age of normal, routine fertilisation and implantation.
“For some, IVF may be only one option where tests have been done and everything is ok [on both sides] but they are still not getting pregnant.” Then it is time to cut delay and make the prognosis a tad better.
Stress too is a killer condition, says Dr Obende. “A woman who has been married years without issue. Even though everything appears normal, stress would have set in, and stress alone could be a factor that could determine whether she gets pregnant or not. If she goes for IVF and she is lucky to have a baby, that stress comes down and then she can actually have pregnancies spontaneously thereafter.”
It is just a woman’s problem. Doctors have to consider the structure and motility of a man’s sperm too, hence they encourage that both partners be part of a treatment cycle from start.
So what then is the big deal with IVF? Simply put, a woman’s body is stimulated to produce eggs, which are collected and fertilised outside the body. In three to five days, viable eggs are selected and implanted in the uterus.
It is dicey. Successful fertilisation and transfer could be partial or complete, so too is failure. “After transfer you don’t really have much to do; it depends on the woman and God.
“There are actually a lot of hurdles but what we try to do is to maximise the chances,” Dr Obende said.
So far, the project claims success rates of up to 30%. And compromising quality for cost is not an option, though GHA hopes its charges could nosedive considerably when its own laboratories become operational this year, cutting off need to use Nisa Premier’s.
Sharon’s birth comes weeks after the hospital completed record kidney transplants and open-heart surgeries that they believe should afford Nigeria’s PPP bragging rights.
Its actual meaning is for Nigeria to start looking for “arrangements that are working,” according to Dr Obende.
“In public hospitals, there are lots of issues that will not make such centres work, and some of them are already manifesting,” he explained. Pointing to strikes and threats of more. “Government should be wise enough to bring more of these public hospitals into a PPP arrangement for us to see results.”
Result could be as far ranging as when private media took over Nigeria’s media landscape when it wasn’t thought possible.
“I think the same thing can happen with hospitals, with the health sector. There are so many people in the sector [who] are not doing anything – of which a PPP arrangement will not be able to accommodate them. But those are the people resisting change,” he added.
Pam took the decision with her husband before ever going the IVF way. “I saw it and believed it would work,” she said.