IVF: Bridge Clinic Celebrates 1,935 Births, Raises Fresh Hopes

Mrs. Titilayo Akati, a civil servant got married in 2002, and after waiting for four years without conceiving, her worries grew. She had moved from one prayer house to the other seeking help and then a friend suggested, The Bridge Clinic.

According to Mrs. Akati, “I came with my husband in 2006, the first time I entered here, I told God I wanted to have my baby here, after the procedures, the doctor said that if it doesn’t work the first or second time, we can always come back again, but believed I will make it the first time. To the glory of God, I took in January 2007 and I put to bed, October 1, 2007. My boys are eight years old now and they are very intelligent.

“Although IVF is still very expensive; I didn’t have the money, but God used my boss to help me out. The procedure was not stressful, it is painless; after the sperm have been injected into the eggs, and you would be informed when it would be injected into your body. You will even be asked if they can keep your remaining eggs so you don’t have to go through the process of extracting the eggs again. I had 10 good eggs, I asked them to transfer three and discard the rest and to the glory of God, two fertilized.”

Speaking at a children’s party to mark the milestone of birthing 1,935 kids in its 16 years of existence, coordinator, marketing and customer service of the Clinic, Dr. Ekundayo Omogbehin noted that the healthcare space lack regulation and so we have a lot of people dabbling into sectors of medicine they have no business with, so we have people in the gynecology space into IVF.

“Despite the fact that there is no regulation in Nigeria, we have always tried to benchmark ourselves with global best practice; the lab here is the only lab in the whole of West Africa that meets European standards. We want to be able to give our clients the best chance of getting pregnant at the first shot.

“When partners meet, there is 25 per cent chance of getting pregnant, but here we have up to 40 per cent chance and through that we have been able to give 1935 children and if you calculate that it is an average of one baby every three days.

“Our international collaboration sets us apart, we have partnered with the IVF hospital in Australia, and they have done over 30, 000 babies, so what we do is that each client that comes, we review with them so whatever technologies they use over there to get results is duplicated here. What we are trying to tell Nigerians is that you don’t have to go abroad to get this done.”

Commenting on its affordability, he said, “You cannot put a price to a baby but then that does not mean we should blow it out of proportion and we try as much as possible to make it affordable and in cases where people are struggling, we have also been able to partner with financial organisations such that you can have access to finance and be able to bridge that gap and pay back over a period of time or you save towards the treatment.”