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History was made over the weekend, when a
57-year-old mother, Mrs. Folashade Akiode was honoured during the Nordica Bon
Bon family fiesta held to mark this year’s International Children’s Day for
breaking all medical rules of menopause and having her set of triplets seven
years ago.
Mrs. Akiode who retired from the Lagos State Civil
Service as Director of Service, but now doing her own business was married for
18 years before she had In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) at Nordica fertility
Clinic, delivering a set of triplet.
Making the presentation of N50,000 to Mrs. Akiode,
Dr Abayomi Ajayi, Managing Director, Nordica Fertility nationwide told
journalists that the event which held in Lagos, was organised by Fertility
Awareness Advocacy Initiative (FAAI) with collaboration from Nordica Fertility
to celebrate children born through IVF.
Dr Ajayi also said that the main objective of
NORDICA is to complete families, noting that age is not a barrier to achieving
pregnancy through IVF.
The Fertility expert explained that Nordica also
tries as much as possible to limit the age at which people can have IVF to
avoid abuse of technology, recalling that the oldest mother in the world is a
70-year-old.”
For Mrs. Akiode, the gyneacologists explained,
“She delivered her children at 57. She actually had triplet, a boy and wo
girls, but the boy died during the neonatal period.”
“Age has never been a barrier but the thing that
we have technology doesn’t mean we use it anyhow and so what we try to do is to
limit the age at which you can have IVF.”
On the major challenge of fertility experts
following the recession, Dr Ajayi said that power supply poses a challenge as
fertility treatment industry are dependent on generators to do business.
However, he acknowledged that there’s a limit to which fertility treatment
centres can increase price.
He however called on the federal government for
intervention and to help see that there are no quacks in the system, so that
people who pay for the service can get value for their money, saying that when
there are quacks those who think IVF is expensive will start patronising them.
Another family of Olayemi Sofunlayo who had six
children through IVF were also awarded N100,000 for emerging the largest family
from Nordica Fertility Centre during the occasion.
“Well, that was the largest children in the family
from Nordica. They had the six children from Nordica, that’s why we chose to
recognise them, they had them two times.” Dr Ajayi said.
While telling her story, the visibly excited Mrs.
Akiode said that accessing IVF was not so expensive for her since she was
working and even training other people.
Commenting, Engineer Oladipo Soetan, treasurer of
FAAl, said, “We are the support group to Nordica facility. We have an
association that comes to create awareness among people who are looking for
babies. There are many families out there whose families are not completed, we
have passed through Nordica. In view of this we came together to form an
association to create awareness to the general public to know that IVF babies
are normal babies. Many people run from IVF, thinking that IVF children are not
normal and we are here to say that IVF babies are normal babies, very
intelligent with high IQ. As parents we are spreading the gospel for people
should do IVF if they have challenges with fertility.
“l have one boy, Emmanuel, after 19 years of
fruitless marriage, at that time my wife was close to 50 before we had him.
Actually if you see him he looks like me. We are like identical brothers. By
July he will be nine.”
Mrs. Tola Ajayi, Clinic Manager, Nordica Fertility
Centre, said that the Nordica Bon Bon family fiesta was organised to create
awareness about IVF, adding, “the only unique thing about the goals of the
party is that it will address that issue of difficulty for parents to identify
with IVF, to say, ‘We did IVF.’ “That’s the issue and it took some efforts for
us to be able to get them to come for the party.”
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