Any
Woman Can Have Her Baby Irrespective of Age – Dr Kate Omonlei - Onoja speaks on
why she is offering IVF treatment at 50% discount
Can
you tell us a little about the fertility center?
Grabbo fertility center is a clinic located on number
2, 3rd avenue Gwarimpa in Abuja
For
how long have you been running this fertility clinic?
We’ve been doing fertility treatments for quite some
time now for over two years, even though this center came to be two years ago, I’ve
been into fertility treatments in various places where I’ve worked before this center
opened, and for over five years now, I have been into gynecological practices
and management of fertility
What
specific services do you offer here?
In Grabbo Fertility Clinic, we render wide range of services,
we do treatment of any form of fertility generally and other aspects of
gynecology, and any form of infertility which is both male and female
infertility, we do detailed investigations of infertility and its causes and
manage every form of infertility. We render services like In Vitro
fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer which is our major cause here. We also
render other advanced fertility management like intracytoplasmic sperm
injection for men that have problems with their semen like low sperm count or
low motility or low morphology, we need advanced form of Invitro fertilization
to help select the best semen for their wives so they can have their own
biological children. We also do other forms like embryo donation, like women we
notice don’t have eggs in their ovaries as a result of disease like
endometriosis or as a result of age because we discovered that some people who
have age on their side and they can’t produce eggs any longer, their ovaries
are exhausted, so what we do for such women is that we look for donors that
match their characteristics and we also get semen from their husbands and use
to treat the egg and transfer into them instead of adoption, they get to carry these
babies by themselves so they have the bond right from the uterus and are able
to have their own children. For men, there are men who actually don’t have
spermatozoa at all, we call it complete exospermia, and we’ve check their
testis and they actually do not have. We also have services like sperm banking
where people can actually have the semen to use to treat their wives so they
can get pregnant and have kids. We also help with in Eggpreservation which is a
very key aspect of fertility management because some people by virtue of not
being married or something, they want to preserve their eggs so it doesn’t get
wasted or something so we do oocyte cryopreservation and for such we stimulate
them and harvest the eggs and help them to preserve it until such a time they
are ready to use the eggs. For some women their husbands are not in town and
yet they want to get treated, their husbands are abroad so what we do is that
we get their husbands to come down and produces the semen and then we freeze it
and use it for treatment anytime they are ready. Those are just some of the
services we render here at Grabbo fertility clinic.
If
I should take you back, you mentioned women who have reached menopause or for
some reason or another, are not able to menstruate anymore, so that means that
any woman at that stage can still carry a baby
Yes, a lot of people don’t know this but it’s very
possible. Menopause means a woman’s ovaries have stopped producing eggs but the
uterus is still there. All we need to work on the uterus and give them drugs to
help their endometrine which is the essential part of the uterus that carries
the baby, we give them drugs that will make the endometrine grow and then get
donors, young girls that have very viable follicles in their ovaries, we
stimulate them and get their eggs. Get their husbands semen, fertilize the eggs
and then we put into this women and their able to get pregnant. The bond is
there and the blood is here and they deliver and have their children
Is
there an Age limit to IVF?
With IVF there is no age limit except the person
doesn’t have interest. So for that we offer another service which is surrogacy,
not that some people don’t have uterus but from problems in the past, their
uterus is damaged from either dilation in the past and uterus is damaged and
she cannot carry babies any more. What we do for such women is surrogacy, we
get people who can help them carry their baby they have the eggs and the eggs
are viable and then we harvest the eggs, we then get their husbands semen and
get the eggs fertilized, get a surrogate mother who will carry the baby for
them
Can
you explain to us what IVF means?
IVF means Invitrofertilization, in full it is IVF and
ET that is Invitrofertilization and Embryo transfer. IVF is a form of assisted
reproductive technology that helps to overcome the problem of infertility in
couples. We notice that in our environment, the leading cause of infertility is
infections. Where most women’s have blocked tubes and we need the sperm to swim
from the vagina where it is deposited to the uterus through the tube and the
egg produced from the ovaries swimming into the tube were fertilization will
take place before the embryo will swim into the uterus for further growth but
by virtue of infection or some other causes, this is not naturally possible for
some couples and IVF helps to overcome this, what it does is it stimulates the
women and we harvest the eggs and bring them out and get their husbands semen,
mix it together and give it some time for fertilization to take place and
growth , development will occur and this growth and development goes on in
special machines called incubators. We put them in an incubator and give them
time to develop and in 3-5days, we bring them out and see the ones that really
growing and are actually viable, and by 5 days they would have produced the
blastocyst and this blastocyst is really the baby, that’s the embryo. It’snow transferred
into the woman’s uterus and in two weeks we expect a positive pregnancy test.
What
has been your success rate so far?
Success rate in Grabbo fertility clinic has been
wonderful. Worldwidesuccess rate is about 40%, this because there are some
batches you do that could be 80% and some are not up to 80%. In Grabbo
fertility clinic it has been very wonderful because of the sophisticated
equipment we use here, we have recorded as high as 60% which even beats the worldwide
success rate. So our clients and customers are very happy
We
know you’re giving out a promo right now, we would like to know what informed
that decision
Overtime in the management of infertility in Nigeria,
we discover that infertility is there among our people, It has eaten deep into
our people and so many marriages have crashed because of infertility. We
noticed that this problem is not because the people don’t want to use the IVF
for management of their infertility, we discover that their major problem has
always been cost, because the drugs, media, consumables, IVF settings in the
lab and bringing in these equipment is very expensive and we noticed that so
many Nigerians are not able to use this facilities. We need to help the people
out there that have these problems and don’t have money to run the cycle. For
example each cycle costs 1-1.500, 000. That’s how much a couple will spend to
treat infertility so in order to help the masses, we have to find a way to
bring down the cost and we had to collaborate with companies that produce the
consumable which is the drugs and they offered to give materials to us at a
ridiculously low price that would help us to help us to bring down the price of
IVF and make it accessible to couples that need it.
When
does the promo start?
The Promo starts on the 1st of June and is
supposed to last for 3 months and by the 31st of August we expect
the promo to have expired. This is because the materials they are sending are limited.
Within this period of time we expect women to come use up these materials and
take advantage of the promo. Currently we are giving it at 500,000 naira. This
is something that ordinarily costs 1-1.500, 000. But we are giving it at
500,000 which we think will help our women overcome their problems
What’s
the response so far?
It has been wild, we weren’t expecting this much. That
also helps to confirm that the reason people haven’t been using it is because
of funds. So many people have been calling and sending in money, people we
haven’t even met, because they know the space is limited. We expect people that
are hearing this now to quickly come use it because after the promo it will go
back to its original price
So
what is the process of IVF?
The process of IVF practically for every woman should
take up to 4-5 weeks because the woman has to come and we run some tests and
all. The good thing about this promo is that both the drugs and the lab test
the woman is doing areincluded. All you need to do is make the 500,000 payment
and your treatment is done. If the woman comes for a visit, we access the woman
which is called the initial assessment, within the time that the treatment will
start. The treatment is a long protocol and usually we start on day 21 of the
woman’s cycle and we down regulate for about 2-3 weeks depending on the woman’s
respond to the drugs given after which we add another drug to stimulate for
another 10-14 days then thereafter we do our harvest, wait for fertilization
and we transfer after 5 days and the rest is history.
Tags
Society