Why more Kenyans are embracing IVF

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The success rate of the procedure has been seen as in the top margin at between 40 and 45 per cent. FILE 

By DOREEN WAINAINAH

In Summary

• Today, many couples who are having difficulty conceiving are resorting to the laboratory to get a child and its working going by the number of treatments local fertility doctors are carrying out.

• Why more Kenyans are embracing IVF

Forty-nine-year-old Nancy* (not her real name) had been struggling for the last 12 years to get pregnant. After fruitless tries, she decided to seek out assisted reproductive therapy.

Visiting Mediheal Diagnostic and Fertility Centre in Nairobi, one of the six IVF clinics in the country, the doctors were sceptical about her ability to carry a pregnancy to term.

“We examined her and found that she had fibroids that made her chances of conceiving almost nil,” says Dr S. R. Mishra, chairman of the Mediheal Group of Hospitals.

The fibroids eliminated her as a viable candidate for IVF due to the fact that her uterus was not a suitable environment for a test-tube baby.

“We referred her to a doctor at Aga Khan University Hospital where she had an operation to get rid of the fibroids, came back six months later to try again. She got pregnant and had her baby at 50,” says Dr Mishra.

Nancy’s bundle of joy is just but one of the success stories of IVF treatment in the country following the success of the first test tube babies born in Kenya in 2006. For the Mediheal Group, she is the oldest patient they have had to date.

Vision

With fertility experts like Dr Joshua Noreh pioneering the IVF in the country, the success rate of the procedure has been seen as in the top margin at between 40 and 45 per cent.

As a young man in university in India in the 90s, Mishra had a vision of setting up a fertility clinic, a dream he achieved in 2004 when Mediheal began its journey towards successful fertility treatments in Kenya.

Initially, the group was handling about 20 cases every year, a number that has been growing steadily. Now, annually, Dr Mishra and his team are handling 40 to 50 treatments in the four to five cycles they handle annually.

“We do the cycles at particular times because of bringing in the equipment and also the experts for our partner, the Dr Pai Group from Mumbai,” he says.

The increased number in the patients seeking the treatment has not only been seen by the Mediheal group. Across the road from their Nairobi clinic is Dr Praful Patel’s clinic at the Aga Khan Doctors Plaza.

Being among the pioneers of IVF in the country, the Dr Patel has a passion for his line of work.

The BDLife team caught up with him when he was winding up a cycle of IVF treatments. Annually, he and his team do five cycles with each cycle handling 30 patients.