Reproductive health experts recently concluded a week long meeting where evidence-based recommendations on fertility care and research were made to the World Health Organisation, WHO.

 

Representing the WHO Africa region at the meeting were co-pioneer of IVF in Nigeria and Chief Medical Director, Medical ART Centre, Lagos, Professor Oladapo Ashiru and Dr James Olobo-Lalobo, both of the African Fertility Society.

 

In a statement, Dr Sherly van Poel of the Reproductive Health and Research Centre described the meeting as a “milestone development in closing the gap in the explosive new knowledge necessary to promote access to quality, safe and responsible fertility care worldwide”

 

 

Chairing a closing session, Ashiru observed that the recommendations will inform and support the development of WHO Fertility Guidelines.

 

“The long awaited change in fertility mind set of the African will now begin to change for ever. The withering childless African woman blamed, for far too long, for infertility of any cause should at last begin to expect an improved quality of life as the make men climb down and calm down in the face of evidence-based fertility recommendations made,” he noted.

 

The WHO guideline will close the gap in the standard of fertility care and assisted reproductive technology regulation missing in Nigeria and most of Africa. Areas covered during the working consultations at the WHO Department of Reproduction and Research, include glossaries of terminologies, acceptable standards of practices and research questions.

 

Also speaking, Olobo-Lalobo remarked: “Right now, Uganda is geared to the implementation phase of the WHO Fertility Guideline through multi-stakeholder involvement, creating fertility awareness, embedding patient-friendly regulation and promoting related research.

 

“Tomorrow must be better than today….this is the definition of hope that every childless couple should expect.”

 

By Sola Ogundipe

Vanguard