In response to the sobering statistics and due to the high premium placed on child bearing in Nigeria and indeed Africa at large, In vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF) clinics are proliferating across the country as private sector make efforts to address the problem.
However experts have expressed concern over the abuse of ethics in the practice of Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART) in Nigeria.
The Association of Fertility and Reproductive Health (AFRH) Nigeria, committee on, 5th August, 2017, held a public and focus group discussion on the Practice of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) in Nigeria with the aim of drafting ethical guidelines for the practitioners within the bounds of Nigerian’s Medical, legal, religious and socio-cultural realities.
The Participants were drawn from the Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal Clergy, Islamic Clerics, Legal Practitioners, Medical Professionals and the general public.
“Assisted Reproduction by its very nature raises ethical issues that is open to individual interpretation and needs to be addressed such that regulations to guide the practice are codified and adopted across board by all practitioners”, said Faye Iketubosin the President, Association for Fertility and Reproductive Health, (AFRH),
Faye Iketubosin said the forum was organized to listen to different groups and religion how they feel about the effectiveness of In Vitro Fertilization, adding that the proceeds of the public discussion would go into the drafting of Ethical Practice Guidelines for ART activities by the AFRH.
“It’s an enlightening session and also an information gathering for practitioners, we as practitioners are concerned about we carrying out our duties in an ethical way. We need to speak to the public to get their opinion on certain things that we do which we think maybe controversial, particularly when they are in conflict with our culture. So at the end of the day we want to know what is of ethical standard as regard our profession in Nigeria” said Iketubosin.
Ahmad Sa’eid of the department of surgery, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, LASUTH, Speaking from the religious perspective, who was a panelist, argued that for IVF to be considered, the religions in the country should be put in place.
“This program will provide a framework for some kind of policy for the government for development and maybe for future presentation as a kind of law. We can see the religious aspect of it and therefore we are hopeful that whenever these policies will be made and laws developed, it will take into cognizance the fact that more than 90 percent of the citizens of this country are either Christians or Muslims. So you can’t make a law that will disregard these fates.
“We want to assume again that when such policies or laws are developed, it will also take care of the concern that our culture is very important to the people who are citizens of this country. The fact that it’s happening in other parts of the world doesn’t mean that everything happening there must be imported wholesale into Nigeria. Child bearing brings joy but the fact that I want to fill the joy of child bearing doesn’t mean that I must get that at all cost” said Ahmad.
Richardson Ajayi, Chairman AFRH Ethics Committee, commented that the essence of the programme was to enable the practitioners reflect to the perspective of the society as regards religion and non-religion.
“The whole concept of ethics is the fusion of different positions. There are religious group that has certain positions and non-religious group have a certain position, so we are only trying to reflect the framework of our society by getting the position we believe is right or wrong according to our own society. The law is a bit slow in Nigeria and one of the objectives of this forum is to be able to reflect that irrespective of the society. Once we know what the society thinks, the next thing is to try and put it into law. This is part of the journey of trying to modify the legal position of what IVF in our country should be” said Ajayi.
