Cheap IVF option to tackle Africa’s 30% infertility rate

DOCTORS are getting ready to introduce a cheap in vitro fertilisation procedure across Africa, where women are sometimes ostracised 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% of women on the continent are unable to have children. An estimated 80 million people in developing countries are infertile.

“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.”

Speaking 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 have already been treated in Khartoum, Sudan, and other projects are to start soon in South Africa and Tanzania.

Sembuya Rita, an infertility activist from Uganda, said infertile women in Africa can face particular economic hardships — their husbands may leave them and they can be cut out of family inheritances.

The cheap version of IVF costs less than $200.

IVF treatments in the West cost up to $10,000.

In addition, rather than using an expensive incubator to create an embryo, Ombelet said that a water bath could be used. Less expensive medicines, low- cost needles and catheters could also be used.