BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

It was both an ed­i­fy­ing and emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence for some cou­ples who at­tend­ed last week­end’s fer­til­i­ty sem­i­nar, host­ed by the lo­cal arm of the Bar­ba­dos Fer­til­i­ty Cen­tre, (BFC).

Some cou­ples in­ter­viewed by the Sun­day Guardian who had been try­ing in ex­cess of ten years to be­come preg­nant, re­ceived a fresh hope as they learned of pro­ce­dures and tech­niques that could im­prove their chances of be­com­ing preg­nant and start­ing their own fam­i­lies.

Shelly-Ann Ma­haraj-Ma­habir shared a beau­ti­ful sto­ry of her three IVF mir­a­cle ba­bies. The 38-year-old en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, who had been di­ag­nosed with en­dometrio­sis and poly­cys­tic ovary syn­drome, caus­ing her to have a low ovar­i­an re­serve bat­tled for years with con­ceiv­ing.

Af­ter the many failed at­tempts and heart-rend­ing dis­ap­point­ments, she de­cid­ed to quit try­ing un­til her hus­band, Guar­av, stum­bled across a BFC ad and they agreed to do a con­sul­ta­tion. To­day they have six-year-old Di­vya and her three-year-old twin broth­ers, Karan and Ki­ran, thanks to the team at BFC and its med­ical di­rec­tor, Juli­et Skin­ner.

The sem­i­nar, which was held at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya, aimed at two things—mak­ing peo­ple aware of BFC, Trinidad and pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al to at­ten­dees on in-vit­ro fer­til­i­sa­tion.

With the help of Skin­ner and Dr Rober­ta Coro­na, whom both pre­sent­ed at the sem­i­nar, cou­ples got a step-by-step guide to the in-vit­ro fer­til­i­sa­tion process and its suc­cess rates. They were al­so taught about some con­tribut­ing fac­tors to in­fer­til­i­ty, ap­proach­es to in­di­vid­u­alised care, com­ple­men­tary med­i­cine and tech­niques as well as ther­a­py, all work­ing to­wards achiev­ing a suc­cess­ful preg­nan­cy.

BFC, ac­cred­it­ed by the Joint Com­mis­sion In­ter­na­tion­al (JCI)—the US health fa­cil­i­ty ac­cred­i­ta­tion pro­gramme that sets in­ter­na­tion­al health­care in­dus­try stan­dards, has been op­er­at­ing for the past 18 years be­gin­ning with its head­quar­ters in Bar­ba­dos. It then opened in An­tigua and came to T&T shores, in 2009, where it has been func­tion­ing for the past nine years.

In an in­ter­view with Skin­ner, she re­it­er­at­ed T&T and the Caribbean had high rates of in­fer­til­i­ty with sta­tis­tics show­ing one in every four cou­ples suf­fer in­fer­til­i­ty prob­lems.

In 2012 re­search found in­fer­til­i­ty in both men and women was on the rise glob­al­ly, with sta­tis­tics show­ing one in every six cou­ples will have dif­fi­cul­ty con­ceiv­ing.

Skin­ner al­so re­it­er­at­ed, in the Caribbean, there was al­so a much high­er male in­fer­til­i­ty rate.

Ac­cord­ing to Skin­ner, sta­tis­tics show that in cou­ples where a cause can be iden­ti­fied, fe­male fac­tors ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of all in­fer­til­i­ty cas­es, male fac­tors ac­count for a fur­ther 40 per cent, and in the re­main­ing 20 per cent of cas­es, there is a com­bi­na­tion of fe­male and male fac­tors. Oth­er rea­sons in women may be be­cause of in­fec­tions, en­dometrio­sis, poly­cys­tic ovaries, scar­ring of the uterus, uter­ine and cer­vi­cal com­pli­ca­tions, blocked tubes, or ad­vanced ma­ter­nal age. In men, a low sperm count, ge­net­ic is­sues, in­fec­tion or in­jury may cause it.

Since set­ting up the clin­ic in T&T, Skin­ner said they have seen more and more cou­ples or in­di­vid­u­als com­ing in for con­sul­ta­tion and treat­ment.

The ob­ste­tri­cian/gy­nae­col­o­gist, trained at Trin­i­ty Col­lege in Dublin, Ire­land, point­ed out in­fer­til­i­ty was more com­mon than un­com­mon in the Caribbean, but the main chal­lenge was a taboo as­pect, which she hopes is near its death with sem­i­nars like what was host­ed a week ago and with in­for­ma­tion that is now more eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble on­line.

“When you think back to our grand­moth­er’s era, if they weren’t get­ting preg­nant, there was so lit­tle in­for­ma­tion that they could ac­cess op­pose to what’s avail­able now, which is gen­uine and good fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion that can help some­one. The great­est rea­son why we do this is about in­for­ma­tion. It’s about ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple,” she not­ed.

“You don’t have to sit there and keep and let time pass you by; there are things that can be done and so­lu­tions to the prob­lem. This is al­so com­mon, you’re not the on­ly per­son in the world deal­ing with in­fer­til­i­ty prob­lems and there are lots of things we can do about it.”

BFC of­fices

BFC has two satel­lite of­fices, one in Trinidad, at the St Au­gus­tine Pri­vate Hos­pi­tal, 4 Austin Street, St Au­gus­tine, and the oth­er at Man­soor Med­ical Clin­ic, St John’s, An­tigua.