Like We Need More Africans: Low-Cost Fertility Treatments Planned For Continent

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

Inexpensive Fertility Procedures Planned for Dark Continent

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080707/ap_on_re_af/africa_cheap_fertility

Budget fertility treatments planned for Africa
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
Mon Jul 7, 10:56 AM ET
 

BARCELONA, Spain - Doctors are getting ready to introduce a cheap in vitro fertilization procedure across Africa, where women are sometimes ostracized as witches or social outcasts if they cannot have children.

Millions of dollars go into family planning projects and condom distribution to prevent pregnancies in Africa, but experts said that more than 30 percent of women on the continent are unable to have children. An estimated 80 million people in developing countries are infertile worldwide. (Chaimfan's note--what a tragedy!  )

"Infertility is taboo in Africa," said Willem Ombelet, head of a task force at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology looking into infertility in developing countries. "Nobody has paid attention to this issue, but it is a huge problem and we need to do something."

At a media briefing Monday at the society's annual conference in Barcelona, Ombelet said he and colleagues were deciding where to test the new procedure.

A small number of women already have been treated in Khartoum, Sudan, and other projects are expected to start soon in South Africa and Tanzania.

Sembuya Rita, an infertility activist from Uganda, said it was essential for public health officials to address the issue. "It's a fundamental right for every person to have a child," she said. (Chaimfan's note--where in the Bible does it say this?)

Rita said infertile women in Africa can face particular economic hardships — their husbands may leave them for other women and they can be cut out of family inheritances.

The cheap version of IVF costs less than $200. Standard IVF treatments in the West cost up to $10,000.

Instead of using expensive lab equipment and medicines, experts said cheaper options could also work. For instance, rather than using an expensive incubator to create an embryo, Ombelet said that a water bath could be used.

Less expensive medicines also would effectively stimulate women's ovaries to produce more eggs, and spending could be further trimmed by using low-cost needles and catheters.

But because fewer eggs would be produced by using cheaper drugs, the success rate would also be lower. In developed countries, IVF is usually successful in about 20 percent of cases. In Africa, Ombelet estimates it would probably be about 15 percent.

The inexpensive procedure has been used on cows and a small number of women. Researchers in the United States are working on developing an even cheaper IVF procedure that might be more effective.

Despite dozens of other health priorities — from AIDS to pneumonia to malaria — experts said it was worthwhile to introduce a budget version of IVF.

In Africa, where infertility is more common than in the West, the problems often follow unsafe deliveries, abortions or infections.

"The cost of being infertile in Africa is much greater than in the West," said Oluwole Akande, an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Akande acknowledged the price of the procedure would still be available only to Africa's upper and middle classes.

He said that in many parts of Africa women who are unable to have children become social outcasts, are labeled as witches, and in extreme cases, are even driven to suicide.

Experts said that even if millions of women were treated with low-cost IVF, it would only result in a one to two percent boost in the overall population.

But with limited funds for public health, officials admitted it would be a tough sell.

"It's definitely going to be viewed as a lower priority," said Dr. Sheryl Vanderpoel, a reproductive health expert at the World Health Organization.

WHO has traditionally been focused on family planning and preventing sexually transmitted diseases rather than helping solve infertility problems.

Vanderpoel said that might start to change once it was clear that low-cost solutions were possible.

"If you remove the fixed costs, it is actually not that expensive to create an embryo in a dish," she said. "This doesn't come with all the bells and whistles, but it works."

[Rubystars]

That's so sad that they're so primitive.

Apparently every woman who either can't have children, or does have children but the children don't come out quite right (like let's say they have a deformity, like a cleft lip, or something more dramatic) are probably called witches.

This is why I think a milder version of feminism is a good thing. Women need to be protected from this kind of ignorance, given rights to defend themselves from these awful social rules that say they MUST have children.

I've also heard awful stories out of the third world, including Africa, that babies who don't come out normal are often killed as "demons" when they're really just innocent little children who need to be held, loved, and cared for. The women who birth them are sometimes murdered too.

These women have absolutely no rights. They are bought and sold, beaten and raped and abused, and then accused of being witches if they or their children have a medical problem or someone in their family or surroundings does.

One story I read happened in Southeast Asia somewhere, where a man was born with facial duplication. He had a partial face growing on the side of his face. When he was born his father tried to murder him, and his mother, weak from the delivery, had to use all the energy she had left to fight to protect her baby. Where was the protection for this mother and child? Where was the respect? Thankfully the man lived to get surgery and go back home and be happy, and his mother survived too, but how many women and children suffer because of evil third world culture?

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

That's so sad that they're so primitive.

Apparently every woman who either can't have children, or does have children but the children don't come out quite right (like let's say they have a deformity, like a cleft lip, or something more dramatic) are probably called witches.

This is why I think a milder version of feminism is a good thing. Women need to be protected from this kind of ignorance, given rights to defend themselves from these awful social rules that say they MUST have children.

I've also heard awful stories out of the third world, including Africa, that babies who don't come out normal are often killed as "demons" when they're really just innocent little children who need to be held, loved, and cared for. The women who birth them are sometimes murdered too.

These women have absolutely no rights. They are bought and sold, beaten and raped and abused, and then accused of being witches if they or their children have a medical problem or someone in their family or surroundings does.

One story I read happened in Southeast Asia somewhere, where a man was born with facial duplication. He had a partial face growing on the side of his face. When he was born his father tried to murder him, and his mother, weak from the delivery, had to use all the energy she had left to fight to protect her baby. Where was the protection for this mother and child? Where was the respect? Thankfully the man lived to get surgery and go back home and be happy, and his mother survived too, but how many women and children suffer because of evil third world culture?

I agree. I read the book Things Fall Apart in high school, in which the Nigerian author rails against, among other things, the British suppressing the sacred Nigerian custom of killing twins because they are bad luck.

It would be much cheaper for the UN to just try to educate these savages as to why their culture and beliefs are so barbaric and primitive. But we can't judge anyone now, can we? 

[Rubystars]

I agree. I read the book Things Fall Apart in high school, in which the Nigerian author rails against, among other things, the British suppressing the sacred Nigerian custom of killing twins because they are bad luck.

How horrible

It would be much cheaper for the UN to just try to educate these savages as to why their culture and beliefs are so barbaric and primitive. But we can't judge anyone now, can we? 

Too bad the Victorians and generations before them aren't around anymore to tell us all we need to civilize those savages or at least put them to work.

[briann]

WTHeck???

This is the dumbest idea Ive heard in a while.

[Rubystars]

I had a thought, what if one of these women gets pregnant with IVF, and then something goes wrong (because she drinks water out of crap creek) and then she and her baby get murdered for being a witch and a demon?

[Shamgar]

Why do you have to be licensed to drive a car but not raise a child??? No credit check, no proof of responsibility, liability, common sense...   I know this will stir someone up.

[Rubystars]

The poor babies born from this procedure will probably be mutilated if they're girls. That's very common in Africa.