Often ostracized as witches or social outcasts in Africa, women who cannot bear children can soon take advantage of a new, inexpensive in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure.
Experts say that more than 30 percent of women on the continent are unable to have children. An estimated 80 million people in developing countries are infertile worldwide.
"Infertility is taboo in Africa," said Willem Ombelet, head of a task force at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology looking into infertility in developing countries. "Nobody has paid attention to this issue, but it is a huge problem and we need to do something."
At a media briefing at the society's annual conference in Barcelona, Ombelet said that he and colleagues were deciding in which countries to test the new procedure.
A small number of women already have been treated in Khartoum, Sudan, and other projects are expected to start soon in South Africa and Tanzania.
The cheap version of IVF costs less than 200 U.S. dollars. Standard IVF treatments in the West cost up to 10,000 dollars.
Instead of using expensive lab equipment and medicines, experts said cheaper options could also work. Less expensive medicines also would effectively stimulate women's ovaries to produce more eggs, and costs could be further cut by using cheaper needles and catheters.
But because fewer eggs would be produced by using the cheaper drugs, the success rate would also be lower. In developed countries, IVF is usually successful in about 20 percent of cases. But in Africa, Ombelet estimates it would probably be about 15 percent.
Source: Xinhua\agencies
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