The first baby from a frozen embryo in East and Central Africa has been born in Uganda.

Dr. Edward Tamale Ssali of Kampala Gynecology and Fertility Center was quoted by New Vision on Saturday as saying that the embryo had been frozen for one year.

"It's her own baby. She just came back for repeat IVF (Intro Vitro Fertilization)," Ssali said of the mother of the one-week-old baby, whose first IVF attempt failed.

More than 300,000 babies from frozen embryos have been born worldwide since IVF was introduced in 1979. The first baby from the longest frozen embryo of 21 years was born two years ago in Britain.

"She came back after one year to try again. Since we had banked her excess embryos, we just got one of them and planted it in her womb instead of undergoing the whole procedure again," Ssali revealed.

Ssali said previously, they would just throw away the embryos because there were no freezing facilities in his fertility center that started in 2004. It registered the first surrogate case in the region in July this year.

"But now, we have embryo banks/freezers with over 100,000 embryos that can be adopted. Our problem is the cost of freezing and storage," he said.

"It's expensive because we use special cylinders and maintain them at temperatures only found on the moon," he added.

Source: Xinhua