IVF IN NIGERIA: I WILL EXPOSE ALL THE BAD PRACTICES
BEFORE YOU DO IVF IN NIGERIA, PLEASE READ THIS POST
READ, SHARE AND REPOST. Walk with me. A long read!
Dear Nigerians,
You know I am always here for you.
When Hope Is Monetised: A Quiet Reckoning with IVF Practice in Nigeria
I will speak now, carefully and firmly, and without raising my voice, because some truths do not need shouting. They only need honesty, and courage, and a willingness to look at oneself in the mirror and not look away.
IVF is hope with a needle, and science with a prayer stitched quietly into it. And so when hope is mishandled, when science is bent, when desperation is treated as a business model, something sacred is broken. Not loudly. But deeply.
Too many IVF centres in Nigeria are breaking that trust.
Yes, success rates can be high in a batch, and yes, miracles do occur. But statistics, like stories, must be told whole. To announce a 70% success rate without disclosing the average is to sell aspiration without context. Globally, we know the numbers hover around 39β45%, and patients deserve that truth, not a curated fantasy designed to make them sign consent forms with trembling hands.
And then there is competition. Oh, how ugly it becomes when it forgets dignity. To pull another centre down in order to appear taller is not excellence; it is insecurity dressed in a lab coat. Let your outcomes speak. Let your ethics speak louder.
Some women should not proceed with IVF at a given time. A thin endometrium is not an inconvenience to be ignored because the patient is hopeful and uninformed. It is a message. And good medicine listens before it acts.
There is also the quiet danger of underqualified hands, staff hired cheaply, trained poorly, and placed in rooms where lives, embryos, futures are handled. Cost-cutting that endangers patients is not innovation; it is negligence pretending to be efficiency.
And please, let us stop pretending we can guarantee twins or triplets. Doctors are not gods, no matter how advanced the laboratory. To promise multiples is to lie, softly perhaps, but still to lie. Worse still is the reckless transfer of too many embryos, gambling with womenβs bodies in the name of higher odds. The world has moved toward single-embryo transfer for a reason. Multiple pregnancies are not trophies; they are high-risk realities.
Patients, already bruised by time and bills and monthly disappointment, deserve respect. Not eye-rolling. Not impatience. Not silence. Certainly not deception, like injecting hCG injection to manufacture a positive pregnancy test, or withholding a negative result because 'she isnβt ready to hear it.' Who decides readiness? Truth delayed is still harm delivered.
You are a serial killer if you inject hcg injections to your patients so it looks like it's positive pregnancy test.
And then there is the cruelty of omission: skipping essential medications to save money and calling it 'coasting,' proceeding to egg retrieval when stimulation has clearly failed, administering placebos as if patients will not one day ask questions. These are not grey areas. They are wrong.
Bad news must be broken gently, and honestly, and by people trained to hold grief without dropping it. Counselling is not an optional extra. It is part of care.
If a procedure is beyond your skill, refer. If a complication occurs, disclose. Duty of candor is not a Western idea; it is a human one.
And yes, IVF is expensive. Drugs are costly. But exploitation wears a particular smell, and patients can sense it even when invoices are wrapped in polite language.
Medications are not communal property. Embryos are not to be shared, traded, or 'managed' without explicit consent. These are not resources. They are possibilities. They are futures.
STOP GIVING PEOPLE'S EMBRYOS OUT WITHOUT CONSENT. YALL BE MOVING MAD!
Do your best, always. But remember the limits of medicine.
Playing God has never ended well.
IVF is already an emotional rollercoaster, and patients climb aboard with faith, and fear, and emptied savings accounts. What they deserve is transparency, integrity, and care that does not flinch when tested.
So this is a call,not for punishment, but for accountability. Not for silence, but for reform. Not for perfection, but for decency. Do better.
Because hope, when entrusted to you, should never leave your hands diminished.
IVF centres are exploiting girls