LAGOS – A fertility expert, Dr Kingsley Onwuzurigbo, on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to provide childless couples access to In vitro fertilisation (IVF) at affordable rates.
Onwuzurigbo told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that many couples desired to have children but could not access or afford the IVF treatment.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, says, “In vitro fertilisation is a process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body, “in glass”.
“The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman’s ovulatory process, removing ovum or ova (egg or eggs) from the woman’s ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a fluid medium in a laboratory.”
Onwuzurigbo said that the cost of fertility drugs such as gonadotropins, which had to be imported, made the IVF treatment procedures expensive.
“I still do not understand why we cannot manufacture gonadotropins in this country.
“Indians manufacture their drugs and the total cost of the drugs used for IVF is really reduced because they manufacture their drugs.
“Though, people will say it is Indian drug, but they manufacture it and they are using it and patients are getting pregnant with it.
“We all import drugs; pay import duties, NAFDAC approval, all that.
“When I was in India, there was a drug that cost, when you convert the money into Nigeria, barely N4,000.
“I asked the people to bring the drug to me, they said that one is over N20,000; that they have to pay NAFDAC, they have to pay custom, they have to pay this one. So, how will it come down?
“Emzor manufactures paracetamol, it can never make it expensive.
“If we manufacture the drugs in Nigeria that’s where we are going to start from. But the thing is that in reducing the price, you must not compromise the standard.”
Onwuzurigbo urged stakeholders in the health sector to establish more IVF centres in the country.
“When there is competition, a lot of things come into play.
“Not only do the prices go down, but success rate goes up because the doctors become more skilled,” he said.
“You can talk about IVF in Lagos. In my state, Imo, there is no IVF centre.
“There are states like that. Some people have gone to countries in Europe, Asia, and South Africa to do training and because of that we have some centres. But most of them still revolve around this western region.’’
Onwuzurigbo commended the Federal Government’s efforts at establishing IVF centres in some teaching hospitals.
“University of Benin Teaching Hospital has an IVF centre, National Hospital, Abuja has another one and Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, is starting another one,” he explained. (NAN)