•Tells City People
Prof. Oladapo Ashiru just turned 70. He is a big name in Reproductive Medicine. Whenever his name is mentioned, what always comes to mind is the Test Tube Baby feat he came up with in 1986. Let’s tell you more about him and his achievements.
Professor Oladapo Ashiru has MB.BS from the University of Lagos, MS and Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. One of the significant contributions of Prof. Ashiru in the field of reproductive endocrinology is in the elucidation of mechanisms controlling pituitary gonadotropins (FSH) release. He showed that exogenous FSH has positive feedback on the release of endogenous FSH. That is the basic science behind the use of exogenous gonadotropins (Pergonal, Metrodin and others) for extrafollicular development, in infertility management and IVF cycles. Currently, his area of research is in embryo culture techniques and implantation failure.
He pioneered the IVF program in Nigeria in 1984 and his team successfully delivered the first test-tube baby in Africa in 1986. He has over 25 years in the management of difficult cases of infertility, 28 years of experience in IVF and 15 years of experience with ICSI and new assisted reproduction technologies He was appointed Consultant reproductive Endocrinologist to Lagos University Teaching Hospital in 1980 and Professor of Anatomy in 1983, making him the youngest appointed professor of medicine in Nigeria at the age of 32. He was a Reproductive Endocrinologist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Omaha in 1978.
He obtained a joint appointment with the departments of Anatomy and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) at the Professorial level. He established two IVF programs for the University in 1996 and became the pioneer director of the University based IVF program at Chicago in 1996. It is currently one of the best IVF centres in the US. He has established collaborations with several infertility centres internationally. Professor Ashiru obtained the licentiate of the American Board of Bioanalysis in High Complexity Laboratory Director HCLD (ABB) in 1997. (The American regulatory and licensing body for assisted reproduction technologies). Prof Ashiru through the OARS Foundation has devoted the last couple of years to preventive measures on infertility and anti-aging measures, through seminars, newspaper column contributions, and the publication of the Reproductive Health Magazine.
He has undergone training in Modern Mayr Medicine and is board certified in Austria. He is the author of Want a Baby, a book on the Causes, management and treatment of infertility.
A few days back, City People asked him how he felt by that feat in 1986. “I feel happy,” he says. That makes you feel good that you are able to contribute something good to your country. Because it was that determination that really activated me to do that, that what goes on abroad, we can also do the same here. Simply because I was in this same class with these people (the Caucasians) the whites and you know that you can do better than them. If they are doing something we too should be able to do and that our people should not be going abroad for such services for IVF. And I am happy that today, as compared to when we started this IVF programme in Nigeria only 5% of Nigerians were doing this in Nigeria. The remaining 95% who needed to do IVF to have their babies had to go abroad, to London and America and all other places. That was where Nigerians went to at that time I mean, those who needed this help. But I am happy that today as a result of that foundation we made here only 2% of Nigerians go abroad for fertility treatment. We have been able to do that. Today, we are able to have Medical Tourism for IVF. People now come from all over the world into Nigeria to have treatments in Nigeria. In fact, as of today there are 92 IVF Centres in Nigeria and we are operating almost, over 7,000 cycles in a year, all together, due to this process, we did years back. That is what makes me feel good. That if you look at Lagos alone, we have about 50 IVF Centres. So, it’s no longer something that is so difficult and unrealistic. It is now achievable. And we have this society that we formed, myself & Prof. Giwa-Osagie. We started this fight together. It is an African fight. It is called the Association of Fertility and Reproductive Health of Nigeria, where people come to say what this is what I am doing, so we can become standard. We have the regulation. We have the Guidelines. I am also a member of the Lagos State Monitoring for IVF. We do all these so that the thing is now available, as opposed to, in the 80s, almost 30 years ago.
Like it is in the US. when I was working in Chicago, at the University Fertility Centre, there were 42 Centres & Clinics of IVF in Chicago and we were all coming together. There was no competition. We were all friendly and close. This is what I am happy that we have been able to do.
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