Infertility is a major home breaker in Africa and Nigeria to be precise. Many in this part of the world believe that any marriage without children, no matter how financially buoyant, lacks bliss. Many churches, mosques and traditional houses of worship are filled with women who are seeking the face of God for the fruit of the womb and many have been stigmatized for their inability to raise children.
Is the woman alone to be blamed for lack of children as the custom is in many Nigerian homes? Do mothers’ in-law ever believe that their daughters’ in-law are not witches when they do not have children early enough in marriage? These and many more answers have been provided by a core professional who has been in the fertility business for more than three decades.
Dr Abayomi Ajayi is not an unknown figure in the Nigerian medical fertility business. He is a fertility specialist, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and the Managing Director, Nordica Fertility Center. He has through his clinic, pioneered the Intracytoplasmic Morphologically Selected Injection (IMSI) in Nigeria. He has built a successful 30-year career in the medical profession, which spawned from a single-minded vision to save lives and change destinies; a dream he’s nursed since his childhood.
Let’s quickly tell you that his high-flying career began in 1984, when he graduated from the College of Medicine, University of Lagos. He completed his postgraduate training at the University College Hospital, Ibadan in 1994 where he bagged the award of Fellowship of the West African College of Surgeons in Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
He joined the Lagoon Hospital, Apapa in 1995 as an Obstetrics & Gynaecology Consultant and held the post for 7 years. During his stay, Dr Ajayi was appointed the coordinator of the out-patient services of the Hospital.
Did you know that in 2003, he started Nordica Fertility Centre in Lagos, pioneering a wide range of assisted reproduction services across the nation? The clinic specializes in In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and treatment of infertility for couples facing fertility challenges in marriages and has since inception expanded into 2 other major cities in Nigeria – Abuja and Asaba. It is also an affiliate of Nordica, Denmark. Driven by the passion to help enhance the quality of medical service in his country, Dr Ajayi went further to train at the Iscare Centre for Assisted Reproduction, Bratislava, Slovak Republic; The Institute of Human Reproduction Symbion, Fruebjerguej and The Fertility Clinic of Copenhagen University, Herlev Hospital, both in Copenhagen, Denmark. He also established a platform called the ‘Physicians Roundtable’ where doctors can network and stay abreast of the latest breakthroughs in fertility management and reproductive technology.
Last week Friday, City People’s DAMILARE SALAMI met him at his Ikoyi office where they spoke extensively about infertility in men and women and the possible remedies available to those who want it. Below are excerpts from the interview for your reading pleasure, enjoy.
Does Donor Sperm work the same way donor eggs work?
I don’t know about the same way. You see, in reproduction, the woman is more important than the man.
Why?
Women don’t know how powerful they are now. That is the only secret God has kept away from them. He said that your heart will be to your husband. That is the cross that they carry. But they are more powerful than we are, they are stronger than we are genetically. Though we are stronger physically anyway. When reproduction fails, the egg contributes to the success of reproduction, about 70-80 per cent while the quality sperm is about 20-30 per cent. That is why we say the most important factor in reproduction is the age of the woman. Because the age and the quality of the egg are supposed to be related most of the time. So the most important factor is the age of the woman and the quality of the egg.
Sir, this is Africa and here, there is always a belief that the woman is the problem when the couple has no child. Now, how do we correct that notion that the problem is not only with the woman but it could possibly…
Cuts in… No, it is not possible. 50 per cent chance lies with the woman while the other 50 lies with the man.
So how do we correct that?
Education. You know the most annoying is not even that because we are almost getting over that already. The one that is most annoying to me is a woman having girls and the man quarrelling that she can’t even give me a boy. Who determines the sex of the baby? It’s the idiot. (I’m a man so don’t worry and I have only one boy. So it’s not as if I’m making fun of anybody). It’s a man who determines the sex of a baby and you hear them say don’t come home o if you are not coming with a boy. ‘She dey manufacture boys?’ So we need a lot of education in Africa. It’s not the way we see things that they are sometimes, we need to understand how things are sometimes. That’s why you will see some men, they will have one wife and say she’s not giving me a boy, then, they will go and marry another one; girls again and another one; girls again. Because they don’t understand that they are the ones determining the sex of a baby.
How is the man responsible for the sex of a baby?
Good question. What determines whether you are a boy or a girl are your chromosomes. There are 23 pairs of chromosomes. The last pair is called the sex chromosome and that is what determines whether you are a boy or a girl. When you have XY, you are a boy and when you have XX, you are a girl. You inherit the whole 23 (one of the pairs) from your father and the other from your mother. Because the woman is always XX, the sperm determines whether you are going to have a boy or a girl. For you to have an XY individual, the sperm that fertilizes must be carrying a Y chromosome. Some men, 99 per cent of their sperm carries X so let them have 100 children, they are all going to be girls. And that is the basis of the sex selection that we do for some of our patients. It is called sperm sorting. We try to sort the sperm that are carrying the Y chromosome and use it to fertilise. It is whatever the sperm that fertilizes the egg carries that determines the sex of the baby.
Watch out for part next week
READ ALSO: EX-MAN UTD STARM MAROUANE FELLAINI TESTS POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS
Send Us News, Gist, more... to citypeopleng@gmail.com | Twitter: @CitypeopleMagz
