By ARTHUR OKWEMBA- Daily Nation

Dr Nelly Kitazi, a psychiatrist, says bringing forth life is the essence of a woman and a man, and if they cannot perform this function, then they may considering themselves worthless. Photo/FILE

Kenyan childless couples are going to great lengths and expense to have children. Unable to have children, some couples are taking out huge bank loans, selling property, withdrawing all their savings and investing the millions in baby projects. They will try every artificial method to conceive.

One such woman is Janet and her husband, who spent more than Sh4 million and finally gave birth to Hope, her baby girl who is now 10-months old. The quest to have a child began five years ago, but she was not prepared for the long and arduous journey.

“It never occurred to me that this was going to be a financially and emotionally draining process,” she said. After a series of tests and taking fertility-enhancing drugs for three years, she was still unable to conceive. Further tests established that her husband’s deformed sperm could neither swim well nor fertilise an egg.

Only option

By this time, they had spent more than Sh300,000 searching for a solution. The doctor told them their only option was in vitro fertilisation (IVF), which could be done in South Africa. IVF involves extracting a woman’s eggs and a man’s sperm and conducting fertilisation in the laboratory. The fertilised eggs are left for two to five days to develop into embryos and then inserted into the woman’s uterus.

For Janet and her husband the cost of the treatment, including the air fare and hotel accommodation in South Africa, was about Sh620,000. “That cost shocked us. But we pooled together our savings and decided to give it a try,” she said. Two weeks after the IVF procedure they flew home to await the results from the clinic. But when the news came, it was negative. The embryos had not implanted in the uterus. “My husband and I were so devastated that we spent one week in the house,” Janet recalled.

Six months later, they decided to try again, but this time in London. Medical expenses, accommodation and air fare cost them in excess of Sh800,000. Again, after the procedure, the results were negative. But the London clinic asked them to give it another try, promising to reduce the fee for the repeat procedure. Four months later, after much agony and reflection, they agreed to give it another try.

Negative results

They took a Sh1 million loan from a local bank and spent Sh700,000. But the results again turned out negative. Even with an outstanding bank loan, they decided to give it another shot. And then they read the story of Kenya’s Dr Joshua Noreh in the Daily Nation. He had successfully used IVF to end the agony of childlessness to Kenyan couples.

They decided to try again and paid Sh300,000 for another procedure. Janet conceived on the first attempt but miscarried after a month. “The result hurt me, but it also gave me hope that I could indeed become pregnant,” she said. They tried the procedure again; it failed.

They took some time before deciding to make the sixth attempt in late 2008. Janet conceived and carried the pregnancy to term. And now they have Hope. “I was so obsessed with having my own biological child that it never mattered to me how much it was going to cost. Even now we are still paying some loans,” said Janet, who feels that nothing is as valuable as a baby, and the cost is not important.

Bringing forth life

Dr Nelly Kitazi, a psychiatrist, says bringing forth life is the essence of a woman and a man, and if they cannot perform this function, then they may consider themselves worthless. Having learnt about the in vitro procedure, many childless couples say they are not concerned about the cost. They will pay anything to have a baby to call their own.

Irene and her husband sold their two cars to finance an IVF procedure. After 10 unsuccessful attempts that cost them about Sh3 million, Irene conceived and gave birth to twins. “You never see it in terms of money. Even after failing to conceive on the first two occasions and spending over Sh800,000, I had this belief that every other try will be successful,” she said.

Another woman who has given birth through IVF, Lilian, says: “The biggest mistake is to lose hope and give up.” Lilian has three children, all conceived through IVF and she estimates she has spent Sh2 million. A friend of hers was lucky and conceived and gave birth on the first attempt, spending only Sh300,000 at Dr Noreh’s clinic.

It is most stressful when a woman fails to get pregnant after investing so much money, time and emotion in the procedure. Fertility experts say dealing with negative results is the hardest obstacle for many couples, especially if it is their first attempt. Women bank on it as their last resort, and when it fails, they find that very hard.

Dr Solomon Wasike of Afya Royal Clinics says the process of egg retrieval and the collection of the sperm from the man either through masturbation or injection are so emotionally draining that some men do not want to go through it again.

Breakdown

Joy Noreh, a nurse and the administrator at the Nairobi IVF Centre, agrees. She says some women find it difficult to accept a negative result and break down and wail at the clinic, sometimes bringing everything to a standstill. “Women cry and ask if God really exists, questioning why they have to suffer so much unlike others,” said Mrs Noreh, the wife of the clinic’s founder.

“When I start treatment, the objective is to get a positive result. And hence when you get a negative one, many questions arise as to what went wrong,” Dr Noreh said. A negative result is emotionally draining, even for him, and he said he always rejoices when the women come back after nine months with babies in their arms.

Studies show that scientists working in IVF clinics across the world are unable to point to the factors that determine the success or failure of egg implants. Dr Noreh said the worst moment in his professional life is when the egg fails to implant after everything has been done correctly. Some clients demand a refund.

He said high emotions are understandable, especially if someone has taken out a loan or used all his savings. But he rules out a refund because, of the Sh300,000 patients pay at his clinic, Sh200,000 goes towards the cost of drugs and laboratory tests.

“Even when we reduce the fee by Sh50,000 in subsequent treatments, this cost is absorbed by the clinic since much of the money goes into inputs, which cannot be varied,” he said. By the end of last month, the Nairobi IVF Centre, which pioneered IVF in the country, had assisted in the conception of more than 250 babies that went to term using the technology.

Worldwide, more than three million babies have been conceived through IVF. In Europe, the success rate in most IVF clinics is between 25 to 60 per cent. Still, IVF presents a better success rate than the natural conception, which stands at 25 per cent for every fertile couple.

Scientists say some of the failures women experience in IVF can be attributed to the quality of the eggs, the sperm and embryo; the age of the woman, the quality of her uterus and her living and working environment. The support she gets from her husband, and failure to follow the doctor’s instructions are also important factors.

Studies have shown that young women spend less on the IVF procedure because they have a high probability of conceiving compared to women in their late 30s. Women aged 25-35 years are said to have high chances of embryo implantation, and hence a pregnancy rate of about 40 per cent.

Those in the 35-40 age bracket have a success rate of 20-30 per cent and are likely to spend more money on repeat treatments before conceiving. The age of the woman further defines the number of embryos to be transferred, which impacts the cost.

For young women, only one embryo may be transferred to the first group, whereas at least two or three are required for the second group of women. In Kenya and most Commonwealth countries, two to three embryos are transferred to maximise the chances of conception.

In the United States, where the success rate is estimated to be near 50 per cent, at least four embryos are transferred to the woman’s uterus. In case all the embryos get implanted, US doctors revert to a controversial process known as reduction, where the unwanted embryos are injected with a chemical that stops them from growing. Such process is not supported in Kenya, Europe and many other African countries.

– An AWC Feature

Zain Verjee at Le Rustique, Westlands, Nairobi. Photo/ ELVIS OGINA

By Caroline Njunge

Zain Verjee rarely dresses to impress, but she manages to impress anyway. Not even her simple light blue T-shirt, navy blue jeans and black sports shoes worn without socks dim the glamour she exudes on the small screen.

Standing 5ft9 and with a slender frame, she turned heads as she strode through the lobby of Le Rustique, a restaurant in Nairobi’s Westlands last Thursday. In person, Zain is much slimmer than the image beamed into living rooms across the world from CNN’s London bureau where she is currently based.

She hits the gym three days a week, which she says helps her stay mentally alert and healthy. Which is what her job demands. “A girl also has to look good too, doesn’t she?” she says with a wide smile. The infectious smile and pleasant personality that comes off the silver screen are just natural.

Most respected

It is now 10 years since she left the KTN and joined CNN, one of the world’s most respected media houses. She was 26 years old then, and even though anchoring was not new to her, having presented the prime-time news on KTN for sometime, she could not fight the apprehension that assailed her when she sat on the hot seat thousands of miles away from home for the first time.

It was not lost on her that this time round she would be addressing a much wider audience. “It was a really scary experience which took sometime to get used to. I cannot count the number of times I called home crying because I felt lost and did not know what I was doing,” she recalls.

But each time she hung up, she would do so with raised spirits, thanks to her parents’ encouragement. Today, she cuts a very different persona from the apprehensive woman that would reach for the phone and dial home each time something went wrong at work. She is confident, self-assured and, as she passionately talks about her job, it is clear that she is very much in control.

“My managers at CNN placed me where I was bound to succeed and they supported me every step of the way until I was confident and knowledgeable enough to get the job done,” she says. She is getting the job done. Her current assignment is at CNN’s London bureau where she anchors World News.

Situation Room

A typical working day for her begins at 3 a.m. and by 11 a.m. “when you’re having your morning tea” she is wrapping up. Prior to this assignment, she was based in Washington DC, where she presented the news for The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. She also covered the US State Department for CNN for two years and travelled with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to more than a dozen countries, including Israel, Turkey, Libya, Russia and South Korea. This assignment, she says, gave her a chance to see how diplomacy works.

“Then she was Secretary Rice, now she’s Condi,” she says of her relationship with the former US Secretary of State. This aside, Zain has interviewed international world leaders such as Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on her return from exile. She also travelled back to Pakistan in December 2007 to cover the ramifications of Bhutto’s assassination.

The previous year, she reported from the Demilitarised Zone in Korea, and in September of the same year had an exclusive interview with former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami. Her coverage of the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2008 remains one of her most memorable assignments. “This wasn’t just any other story for me – this was my country and I couldn’t believe what was happening around me,” she says with a tinge of sadness.

Seasoned journalist

Being hit by a tear gas canister at Uhuru Park, of all places, given the significance of the name, also shook her up, but like the seasoned journalist she is, she recovered and took up from where she had left. When working, comfort comes first, so you’re likely to find her wearing jeans and sports shoes. For a night out, though, out comes the dress and stilettos.

During her spare time, she enjoys writing, something that she is passionate about, and out of which she published a children’s book, Live and On Air, a couple of years ago. In future, she plans to write more. Despite the enviable position in the media, Zain is modest about her achievement. “I don’t let success define who I am – what I want to be remembered by is what I give back to society, the positive transformation that my work has on others.”

She values her time, but gladly shares it when asked to get involved in projects that aim to uplift the lives of others, especially in Africa. Women also hold a very special place in her heart. “You don’t necessarily have to help financially to make a positive impact, there are so many other ways of helping.”

Zain, the first born of two children, readily admits that she is daddy’s girl. He would pick her up from work when she joined Capital FM and later KTN. There was a rumour that when she joined KTN, her father insisted on giving her pocket money because what she was earning was “too little” to sustain her. “That’s not true,” she says laughing. “Don’t believe everything you hear or read,” she says.

But she admits she and her father have always shared a close bond. “I am very close to both my parents, but I have a special bond with my dad. I know that he watches all my broadcasts with the same excitement he did when I anchored my first bulletin at CNN.” Her father Johnny Verjee is a hotelier while her mother Yasmin is a DNA sequencing and forensic expert.

“My brother and I had a privileged up-bringing, but humility, compassion and respect were core values that we were expected to carry with us always,” she says. It is no wonder then that her immense success has not gone into her head in spite of her charmed life. For someone who earned less than Sh20,000 at Capital FM where she cut her teeth in broadcasting, Zain is certainly enjoying a good life, admitting that her job pays well.

“CNN treats its employees really well. I am lucky because I can afford a good life, but my feet are still firmly grounded on earth,” she says. Though she says she feels most at peace while in Kenya, she lists Rome as one of her favourite holiday destinations as well as Napa Valley in California and Watamu in the Kenyan coast. She has lost count of the countries she has visited in the course of her job. For a woman that is widely travelled and can easily afford to go on shopping sprees on a whim, it comes as a surprise that she isn’t big on shopping.

No shopaholic

“Like most women, I like to look good, but I am no shopaholic,” she says. She has a wide fan base that discusses everything about her from her hair to her legs. She admits that she occasionally reads what people write about her as a way of keeping up with what viewers think about her work, but doesn’t do it obsessively, explaining that sometimes it can have a negative impact.

She has also been stalked a few times. “I guess it comes with the territory – one just has to be careful,” she says with a shrug. She is not married and she does not rule out settling down in future. So, is there someone special in her life? “That’s personal. A few years ago, my parents wouldn’t be happy when I took a man home, now they’re very happy when I do take a man home,” she says. “I’m working on it,” she says.

cnjunge@ke.nationmedia.com