By Musfirah Hasan
As one of the countries in the world with lowest birth rates, Italy launched its first “Fertility Day” in September this year. It was aimed specifically for women as they are the ones who give birth. However, the country’s first national fertility day has been viewed as sexism and racism towards women.
Infertility is a disease not a taboo. It is defined as the inability of a couple to conceive and for a woman to carry a pregnancy that results in a live birth, after one year of unprotected intercourse. Since years, women are the one to be blamed for if a couple does not have any children yet. However, infertility can also happen to men because of low number of sperms produced or Azoospermia, complete absence of sperms.
In fact, studies show the factors that contribute to the disease are 30% due to female factor alone, 30% due to male factor alone, 30% due to both female and male factors and up to 10% of infertility remains unexplained.
But worry not because infertility is something that is not to be ashamed of as nowadays it can be treated with modern medical technology. According to a report by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), in United Kingdom (UK) more than 250, 000 UK babies born through In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). HFEA also stated that the success rate for IVF has risen from 14% in 1991 to 26.5% in 2014.
IVF is the process of fertilisation by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and then transferring the embryo to the uterus. A typical IVF treatment may involve five steps which are controlled ovarian hyperstimulation, oocyte retrieval or ovum pick-up (OPU), sperm collection for fertilisation treatment, fertilising the egg and blastocyst transfer.
The first step which is ovarian hyperstimulation aimed to stimulate the production of eggs for fertilisation by injecting fertility hormones. It is to increase a woman’s monthly fertility rates to approximate that of a healthy 20 year-old female. OPU procedure is when the eggs are aspirated and collected into a tube.
The third step is to freeze the sperm in case that a fresh semen sample is not available on the day of oocyte retrieval. The fresh semen sample will be investigated to select sperm with the best mobility and morphology for fertilisation process. Therefore, men are recommended to freeze their sperm before the IVF treatment to support the fertilisation process.
Next step is when the egg and sperm is combined for fertilisation process. There are two ways of combining it either using conventional IVF technique which is to allow the egg to naturally select the sperm or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) technique by injecting selected sperm to the ovum. The last step which is blastocyst transfer or embryo transfer is when the embryos is placed into the womb of a female.
In Malaysia, Newlife@PHKL formerly known as IVF Unit Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur is a centre of excellence in IVF in Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur. It was established in 1993 and since then, lots of hope are turning into a miracle when couples successfully delivered babies through IVF treatment.
As the IVF specialist of Newlife@PHKL, Dr. Adilah Ahmad encourages couples to come early for help and treatment because the success rate of any fertility treatment gets lower as the quality of egg will decrease when a woman grows older.
Need to be reminded that not all couples will succeed on their first try. Some even have to wait for three to five years to conceive a child. Siti Sarah Burhan, a mom with triplets, said that endless support from family and friends are important to motivate those who undergo IVF treatment. She is one of those with miracle babies as her triplets were born through IVF.
Hope is what we need for a miracle to happen. The advancement in technology can help couples in fulfilling their dreams of parenthood. However, couples who intend to proceed with IVF must face a series of emotional, social and financial hurdles.***