Tales of exploitation, health risks, death

By Sunmola Olowookere

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The issue of childbearing is a critical part of a woman’s life, and the achievement of an African woman may not be complete if she has no children to call her own.

Temilade (not real name) was the third wife of Baba Ogunje, a popular herbalist in the Ijoka axis of Akure and had a child for him. Trouble reared its ugly head when Baba got a younger girl as wife about five years later and the girl had three children in quick succession.

 Temilade became jealous and felt her position was threatened. Rather than discuss the issue of delay in getting pregnant with her husband, being a herbalist, a friend took her to a traditional fertility clinic where she was given some powdered substance in sachets. As she began to take it, she started to pass watery stool. She complained to the friend who assured her that it was the herbs working.

Alas! She passed out inside the toilet on the third day. By the time her body was discovered, it was already too late as she was long gone.

Many women like Temilade are confronted with challenges of infertility, barrenness and seeking a male child. The business of treating infertility in women, either by orthodox, spiritual or traditional means, is a thriving business especially in Nigeria.

According to a statistics by  the World Health Organisation, (WHO) the fertility rate in Nigeria is estimated to be 5.4, implying that the average woman can expect to have many children during her life. Yet many Nigerians experience infertility.

Chelsea Polis of the Guttmacher Institute, a think-tank, and her colleagues estimate that 31 percent of Nigerian couples fail to conceive a child after 12 months of unprotected sex—a rate at least as high as in the West. In a country where a woman’s worth is defined largely in terms of her ability to bear children, there is a growing market for fertility treatments of all kinds.

Clergymen’s unwholesome practices

In a large church in Akure, along Ondo Road, Prophet James (not real name) is popular among his ilk and he is like a demigod among his congregation.

 Extraordinary and strange practices are rampant in the ministry, yet he is growing his church business in leaps and bounds. Many people, especially youths looking for means to travel out of the country, throng his church. Also, women seeking the fruits of the womb flock to his church.

During special programmes in which he calls the women facing such challenges “expectant mothers”, Weekend Hope can authoritatively report that he mixes his saliva with tea and starts to serve it to the women that answered his altar call for the fruit of the womb.

For those that he specially favours, he spits out rightly in their mouth with the belief that it works faster than the one mixed with tea.

It was observed that none of the women expressed reservations or irritation at the unwholesome practice. Whether out of fear or desperation, no one could tell. He backs up the strange practice with claims that Jesus used saliva in the Bible while performing miracles.

Another female prophet situated along Oda road, Akure, washes the private parts of women seeking for the fruit of the womb with soap and water, not minding the health hazard. She claims that the washing is to remove any embargo hindering the women from getting pregnant.

According to a credible source in the church, some women have gotten pregnant after the washing. However, the source who is a female minister under the ministry could not give a percentage of those who got pregnant out of the number of women that subjected themselves to the cleansing bath.

Ayoola Janet, a woman struggling with a long term infertility issues revealed to Weekend Hope how an Islamic cleric told her that he would help her to conceive by having sex with her, claiming that he was divinely endowed to carry out such acts.

The woman who said she had been barren for 15 years admitted that she was tempted to try it because she was desperate by then. She said she was saved by the fear of being discovered in the future and had refused his overtures.

 In Ondo, another town in Ondo State, Prophet Okanlawon Moses who operates a white garment church sees between one and three new clients per month. He charges between 50,000 and 100,000 naira for treatments that include saying prayers over water, which infertile couples then use. He also uses herbs.

Many Nigerian women suffer abuse, blamed for inability to get pregnant

When Richardson Ajayi created the Bridge Clinic in 1999, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) was still a novelty in Nigeria. He had to fly in doctors and send blood samples abroad for hormone analysis. Today, the technology is widespread, and private IVF clinics are popping up in several wealthy cities of Nigeria.

According to a gynaecologist, Mercy Okpara, the fertility clinic business is buoyed by the fact that many Nigerian women struggle to conceive because they have been harmed by sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), such as chlamydia, or by infections picked up during unhygienic abortions or previous deliveries.

“Another reason is that some others have infertile partners. One study of 246 couples seeking fertility treatment in a Lagos hospital found that 52 percent of the men had a low sperm count or another problem that made it hard to conceive.”

She lamented that few men, however, will admit that the problem lies with them. “To many Nigerian men, infertility is a one-sided thing.” The notion that barrenness is a female malady is so strong, she says, that many women are obliged to pay for treatment out of their own pockets. They often turn up in her clinic in their early 40s, because it is only at that stage of life that they have amassed enough money.

Women have good reasons to spend their savings. One study in Kano, a northern city, found that 38 percent of women seeking fertility treatment in a hospital had been physically or verbally abused. Just seven percent of pregnant women said the same. Other women are abandoned or displaced.

Okpara observed that many men in childless marriages will remarry and that it is only after they fail to impregnate their second or third wives that they seek medical help. As a result, almost all the men who enter the clinic turn out to have fertility problems.

Medical treatment can be expensive, especially when both partners have problems. A single IVF cycle in a fertility clinic is said to cost around N1 million, an amount but far out of reach of the average Nigerian. Because so many clients are in their 40s, treatment is often unsuccessful.

The gynaecologist says that many infertile couples could have been treated fairly, easily and cheaply, had they sought help earlier. But many are unaware of the science of fertility, and neither the Nigerian government nor aid agencies have tried hard to educate them.

According to the World Health Organization, there are annually 350,000 maternal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, with obstetric haemorrhage the most common cause of death. Although maternal mortality can be reduced by health-care interventions such as the provision of family planning, maternity care and access to safe abortion practice, it is not happening in rural areas. Previous studies in rural communities indicated the importance of medicinal plants in their primary health care-system. However, no survey has been done in this region to document the medicinal plants used to treat various gynaecological and obstetric problems.

Like the case of Temilade, she was buried without any investigation made into the cause of her death. No autopsy was carried out. Yet, her husband claimed that she was affected and weakened by the fertility concoction powder discovered among her belongings.

Tales of exploitation by fake fertility clinics

The experience of Fadekemi Olokunola, a teacher is one that resonates among Nigerian women about the importance placed on having a male child.

She told Weekend Hope that she became worried that her husband might seek the arms of other women when she gave birth to four girls. She narrated how she was introduced to a fertility clinic in Ibadan, by her friend who claimed that the clinic has had several success stories in helping women actualise their dreams of having a male children.

Fadekemi said that she took a loan of two hundred thousand naira and registered at the clinic where she was taken through series of treatments and was also given drugs that would enhance conception of a male child.

She described how elated she felt when she became pregnant and was confident that it was a male foetus that was growing in her. She was also encouraged to start buying male clothes as an expression of faith.

Alas! She gave birth to a female child again and decided to let the sleeping dog lie.

Dangers posed by fertility drugs to users

An in vitro fertilisation specialist, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, wrote about the dangers inherent in the usage of fertility drugs

He said that people, most times, misplace virility with fertility and explained that while there are some drugs that can help a man’s libido, there are no drugs that can help his fertility.

Ajayi stated that fertility drugs in tablet form are the most abused type by men and women alike, because people do not understand the dangers of abusing the drugs.

“This is because most of these drugs can be easily purchased or sold over-the-counter without any proper investigation or prescription by a qualified doctor. It is so bad that women with blocked tubes still go to buy this type of fertility drugs for ovulation induction. People use it anyhow because it is commonly available. One cannot treat what one does not know anything about. A proper medical test has to be done to ascertain the problem first. Fertility drugs should never be used without a doctor’s prescription and supervision.

 “They should be properly monitored to see the effects. The doctor must scan continuously to see that the drugs are producing eggs. There is no specific time frame but the doctor needs to be sure that she is not producing too many eggs. Also, the woman can produce more than one egg and more than one embryo. The doctor should be responsible enough not to replace too many in IVF,” he said.

While agreeing that fertility drugs have helped a lot of women to have children, he noted that the major causes of infertility in most parts of the world is either the woman’s tubes are blocked or the man’s sperm count is bad. He said that these two things are not amenable to drugs.

He further urged that patients must have a good assessment before taking any kind of drug, including ovulation induction drugs.

 “I have seen many cases where the man is the problem. He has a low sperm count but the woman is still busy taking fertility drugs. For such women, they are not likely to get pregnant in that type of situation.

“About 60 to 80 per cent of women who take these tablets will ovulate, if their problem is that they are not ovulating. But the side effects include, having a slight headache and what we call hot flashes. This happens when a woman is in a well-ventilated or air-conditioned room, but still feels a sudden heat flow inside her body that later disappears. It is transient.

“Also, this effect could be most frightening for some people who, after using these tablets, could have ovarian stimulation, where the woman produces too many eggs. And that could range from mild to severe. Majority of women who use the tablets would have the mild one.

It has been reported that some people have had severe hyper-stimulation from taking the tablets. That is why the injectable drug is more dangerous,” he warned.