The Truth About… Life And Death: Fertility On A Shoestring

In a follow up to last year’s The Truth About… Mental Health, Claudia Hammond returns this June with a new six-part BBC World Service series examining some of the important global issues at the start and end of our lives.

In the first episode, Claudia looks at fertility, which for many is a hidden problem that occurs before life has even begun. Claudia meets Nosiphiwo, who was ostracised by her husband’s family in South Africa after years of trying, in vain, for a baby. Stories like Nosiphiwo’s, of social stigma and even physical abuse and destitution, are common in low-income countries, where most of the millions of infertile women in the world reside. While programmes tackle the causes of infertility, such as preventing and treating sexually transmitted infections, calls to provide affordable fertility services have been overlooked by agencies which tend to focus on the problem of over population.

Claudia visits Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, where fertility treatment is being offered at a fraction of the cost of private clinics. She meets the programme director, Dr Matsaseng, who is pioneering differing ways to keep costs down. These include using cheaper medications in smaller amounts, to taking on the jobs of several staff himself, texting and supporting patients through each stage of their cycle to coordinate their treatments. The next step is to find a way to take low-cost fertility treatment to rural areas.

Fertility treatment needs a laboratory and the Belgium based ‘Walking Egg Project’, a shoe-box-sized portable laboratory for performing IVF, could provide the answer. By the start of 2014, 16 babies had been born in Belgium using this system, and the team in South Africa now hope to trial it at the hospital.

Publicity contact: SW