ow receptive will Africa be of uterus transplantation?

Last week, UK got approval for its first womb transplant, a procedure to be carried out on ten British women, an action prompted by the birth of a healthy baby boy in Sweden last year. Embryos will be created and frozen using each woman’s eggs and sperm from her partner then the patients will undergo a six-hour transplant. After 12 months on immunosuppressant drugs and close monitoring, each woman will be implanted with an embryo.

Over the years, medicine has come up with several innovative solutions to infertility treatment in both men and women; from drugs, and surrogacy, to surgical procedures, and assisted conceptions like the intrauterine insemination (IUI), In vitro fertilisation (IVF), and Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). While these are all for a good cause, which is to provide people with children, how many of these treatments are being adopted in Africa, a continent where infertility is a taboo, with the women bearing the brunt.

Discussing male infertility in Africa is frowned upon by society, despite the fact that men and women have the same rate of infertility, and that men are found responsible for 50 percent of infertility cases in Africa. This explains why there are only a few studies conducted on Male infertility in the continent; because there is a psychological denial of the problem amongst African men. Owing to the stigmatization placed on infertility and the treatments, African families who patronize infertility clinics, do so in hiding. And though there is a growing acceptance in surrogacy and IVF in some parts of Africa, it’s quite a meagre number compared to the acceptance in the West, and even in India where it has become a multi-million dollar industry.

Apart from stigmatization, the high cost of these procedures also scare potential customers. The average cost of IVF in the UK is about £2500 to £3000, which is equivalent to about a million naira, over KES 400,000, and R64000. According to fertility pioneer Lord Robert Winston, a cycle of IVF should cost about £1,300, which is still on a high side for Africans. Hence the call for the establishment of affordable infertility services, and the implementation of favourable policies and regulations for these treatments.

Two weeks ago, the Association for Fertility and Reproductive Health (AFRH) provided guidelines on ethical practice and regulation of In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) practice in Nigeria during a conference themed – Role of Ethics and Regulation in IVF. “Infertility treatment is not without complications hence it is important that care givers must be licensed to do so, and must be ready to practice ethically following specific guidelines to ensure the safety of our women,” said Dr. Adewunmi Aderemi-Bero, Chairman of the organizing committee, AFRH.

Seeing how slow it is for Africa to openly embrace fertility treatments, it is highly unlikely that the womb transplant – which is a more controversial, more complex, and more expensive procedure – will get the slightest attention in the continent. And say it does, it certainly will follow the ‘secrecy trend’ of already existing treatments in Africa.

For more insight on womb transplantation, listen to the podcast below: