The Pharmaceutical Society of Hope has been rekindled for 17 couples challenged by infertility as they emerged winners during the first round of draws for the 2015 fertility treatment contest initiative of the Fertility Treatment Support Foundation, FTSF, held at the Civic Centre, Lagos.
Two of the winning couples emerged from the audience during the event tagged “Little Miracles” while 15 others were randomly picked from over 12,000 entries from across the nation.
All the winning couples are to be screened after which five couples will be selected to obtain fully funded IVF cycles completely free of charge.
Formerly known as Expanded Access to Reproductive Treatment, EART, Foundation, FTSF was established in 2008 as a result of the increasing prevalence of infertility in the society.
Its goal is to provide financial support and services for infertile couples to access fully assisted reproduction technology, ART, services, in form of free IVF treatment cycles, in partnership with Nordica Fertility Centre, Lagos/Asaba/Abuja.
In addition to providing opportunity for infertile couples to have their own biological children, the FTSF campaign also serves to heighten awareness about the availability of treatment for infertility in addition to presenting a support system.
In a chat, the Managing Director, Nordica Fertility Clinic, Lagos, Asaba and Abuja, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, explained that the goal this year, as in previous years, is getting a live baby.
“The reality is that we cannot give all of them babies. We can only do the screening. FTSF does not take care of medical issues like uterine fibroids or any operative surgery.
“So if a winner has fibroids for example, unless she agrees to go and do the surgery on her own, she probably would not be considered. But if she agrees to do it, then she gets the free IVF. This is why the certificate has an expiry date.”
He said FTSF tries to look at people that can qualify for IVF treatment without encumberances. “It is a medical decision that we have to take. The last time we did this we discovered there were many women that had adverse conditions like diabetes and hypertension. In fact all of the winners that came from a particular part of the country had these issues.
“Such are things that we need to control first before doing the IVF, so we try to choose those that do not have these challenges and that is where the work really is – choosing the five.”
Pointing out that an IVF cycle can fail, he stated that those who wished to do more cycles would have to pay for those cycles.
“This activity is making us to see a group of people whose healthcare is not optimal, but we are making a difference in their lives, because they are coming in contact with proper healthcare when we refer them. So apart form getting babies, they get better health attention. We are not surprised that we lost the previous pregnancies, because we have realised that in this environment, about 61 percent of the patients we see have problems with their endometrial cavity.
