“At Kingswill Specialist Hospital, we put smiles on couples’ faces”

Parenthood is considered to be a blessing in marriage, but the reality of achieving this hinges on the fertility status of couples to bring forth offspring. Due to various infertility issues, many couples are unable to conceive naturally except through special services offered by facilities such as Kingswill Specialist Hospital.

A 2023 WHO report on Infertility Prevalence estimated that around 17.5 per cent of the world’s adult population – roughly one in six – experience infertility, showing the importance of increased access to affordable, high-quality fertility care for those in need.

Since its establishment, Kingswill Specialist Hospital has sparked joy in many families through its reproductive services and infertility treatment services, which include Intrauterine insemination (IUI), in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), ovulation induction and follicular tracking, hysteroscopy and laparoscopy, IVF with surrogacy, high-risk antenatal care, and general gynaecology, among others.

“Our vision is to ensure that people who come as a couple leave as a family, and our mission is to put smiles on people’s faces,” said Dr Chidi Nwogu, the medical director at Kingswill Specialist Hospital.

Dr Nwogu, a consultant gynaecologist, obstetrician, and fertility physician, said Kingswill Specialist Hospital has offered fertility services since 2013.

Kingswill Specialist Hospital was established in 2013 by the late Dr Kingsley Ike Onwuzuruigbo, a fertility doctor, consultant gynaecologist, and obstetrician.

More on IVF services

Dr Nwogu said Kingswill offers many IVF-related services, including conventional IVF and third-party assisted reproduction, which involves the donor gamete (donor oocytes and semen) IVF and also gestational surrogacy.

He said: “We are the first IVF service provider in southern Nigeria to offer in-house pre-implantation genetic testing services in the Southern part of Nigeria, without partnership or outsourcing of any part of the treatment overseas.

“Pre-implantation genetic testing with IVF here in Nigeria has helped bring succour to a lot of couples with incompatible genotypes, enabling them to have disease-free children while still using their own gametes (oocytes and semen)”

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He further explained that couples with incompatible genotypes can plan and have babies free from sickle cell anaemia without looking for egg donors or semen donors of the desired genotype. It has also helped bring joy to families planning to have a healthy baby, especially in the setting of a previously affected child with Down syndrome or other genetic and hereditary diseases, as the embryos are screened for genetic defects. Most common is the use of pre-implantation genetic testing-IVF in family balancing, as couples can now plan for pregnancy of a desired gender with certainty. This helps reduce unnecessary repetitive births associated with trial and error to have a child of a particular gender.

The gynaecologist also said many misconceptions about IVF are limiting its access, emphasising the need for more enlightenment.

“We are a third-world country, and traditions and taboos still hold people back. A lot of enlightenment still needs to be done for people to know that babies through IVF are normal babies. Pregnancy is the same, just that they are special because of what it takes to have them in terms of resources and the long wait by the couple,” he said.

Regarding services outside of fertility treatment, Dr Nwogu said approximately half of their pregnant patients sign up for antenatal care services at Kingswill, while the remaining return to their referring doctors or their bases in the US, UK, Canada, and other African countries.

“Some patients will go back to their doctors, as some have their specialists, gynaecologists, and obstetricians who will manage them, and some, due to distance, will have their antenatal care elsewhere, but half of those who get pregnant through our services enjoy our specialist antenatal care while others go back to their bases in Africa, Europe, and America,” he said.

IVF pregnancies are regarded as high-risk pregnancies not just because of the long wait by the couple and the cost but also because many of the intending mothers are more likely to have conditions that may make pregnancy and delivery riskier, such as advancing age, hypertension, diabetes, previous fibroid surgeries etc.

He added that about one in 10 to 15 couples who come for IVF could require surrogacy to fulfil their goal of reproduction after evaluation.

“Adoption is one of the ways people can fulfil their fertility desires, but the difference between surrogacy and adoption is that you can have your biological child with IVF-surrogacy, unlike adoption, where there is no biological link. We still encourage couples to look into adoption as a last resort for some who have no aversion to it and are encouraged to assess such through the appropriate legal means. Mothers who had their babies through surrogacy still get to bond with the children successfully through breastfeeding contrary to some misconceptions.”

Specialisations: more about Kingswill Specialist Hospital

Regarding quality service delivery, Dr Nwogu said Kingswill Hospital offers specialist services beyond fertility treatment. Experienced obstetricians run their antenatal services, and all deliveries, especially caesarean sections, are routinely carried out by two Obstetricians, with an experienced anaesthetist and paediatrician always present. The antenatal and delivery annexe of the hospital has a number of functional incubators and phototherapy machines, as some babies are likely to be born premature, especially twins and triplets.

He said: “We have specialist care services for these babies because some may be born preterm. IVF comes with higher risks for multiple births, and some of these babies have higher chances of being born preterm.

The hospital offers fertility treatment, paediatric care, high-risk antenatal/maternal and newborn care, and a variety of gynaecological services. It also offers Multidisciplinary care involving other specialities outside of women’s and child health services. Multidisciplinary care involving other specialities comes in when these patients have other conditions alongside infertility or during pregnancy, and the appropriate specialists then get involved in their joint care.

Dr Nwogu noted that Kingswill Specialist Hospital, just like other reputable IVF centres, has been at the forefront of reducing medical tourism related to IVF services.

“Now we have Nigerians in the diaspora mostly from the US, UK, and Canada coming down to Nigeria for IVF services and that brings a lot of foreign exchange to the country”. He stated that the country’s healthcare has seen improvement in certain areas where previously people had to travel overseas for certain treatments such as kidney transplants, open heart surgeries, knee and hip replacement surgeries and IVF services, all of which have seen a reversal in trend but the most notable being IVF and IVF-related services which sees quite a number of Nigerians and non-Nigerian coming for treatment.