Ghana has gone down in history as the second country to use The Walking Egg technology (TWE) to produce a baby. It happened at the Pentecost hospital at Madina, near Accra, where a couple who have been barren for up to 8 years had a healthy baby boy on the third attempt with the technology.
See: Baby Born With DNA From 3 Different People
The baby who weighed 3.3 kg was fertilized through the less popular walking egg process, leaving the family in great awe and excitement.
to shed light on the process, the TWE technology is a rare fertility treatment which allows the sperm of a man and the egg of a woman fertilize outside the body for about two to five days. The egg which has been fertilized is then inserted back into the woman to carry till the delivery period.
The Walking Egg process is one of the three forms of artificial fertility treatment. The two others are intra-uterine insemination (IUI) and intra-cervical insemination (ICI), in other words, intra-vaginal insemination.
The TWE technology is adopted when a woman has conditions like blocked or damaged fallopian tubes, ovarian disorders or even a case where the man has low sperm count. Before such treatment process commences, the couple is examined critically to find out the problem of childlessness.
The method was introduced at the maiden edition of the affordable IVF Fertility Treatment Conference organized by the Association of Childless Couples of Ghana (ACCOG) in 2015.
Briefing the media in Accra on Monday, August 7, the Medical Administrator of the Pentecost Hospital, Dr. Gordon Nii Armah Attoh, emphasized the need for awareness of the IVF method. Children he said are the source of happiness in marriages and that inability to conceive has led to frustration among many barren couples.
Differentiating the conventional IVF from the TWE Dr. Attoh said that the former requires sophisticated medication while the latter does not. According to him, the hospital worked in collaboration with the team in Belgium to introduce the affordable IVF, which also underwent cycles, just like the natural way of becoming pregnant and delivering babies.
Dr. Attoh said although the cost might differ from the conventional method, the TWE method was made affordable for the childless couple because the hospital went through the process in groups to ensure efficiency of equipment, resources and effective utilization of medication.
As seamless as it might sound, the success rate of the TWE depends on a number of factors including reproductive history, lifestyle factors maternal age and many others.
Some women who were present at the event asked that hospitals specializing in the treatment do not hide the failure rate from potential patients.
According to them, every technology, especially the different types of insemination, had failure rates and it would be ideal for doctors to make public the failure rates, just as they celebrated the success rate.
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