Fertility clinic offers women Sh50,000 to donate eggs

Are you a young woman of 25 years or younger? Are you fit and healthy and have a  secondary school or university education? Are you non-breastfeeding and have not had a baby in the last nine months? Would you like to donate your eggs for Sh30,000 to Sh50,000? 

If your answer is yes to all the above questions, a Nairobi-based fertility clinic is looking for you.  

The La Femme Healthcare Clinic seeks to recruit a huge pool of voluntary donors, profile them and keep their details in a database for patients seeking in-vitro fertilisation services. 

Patients looking for donors will access the database and match their preferred characteristics to the donors recruited anonymously. 

Dr Martha Kuruga, fertility specialist and a laparoscopic surgeon told the Star yesterday that patients who seek donors want people who look like them and have similar education qualifications. 

Kuruga added the programme is run because some women are unable to produce healthy eggs to conceive.

"We have patients who do not have any egg reserve. This is either because of prior medical treatment, their ovaries cannot make any more eggs, had a surgery that has the ovaries removed or they have premature menopause," she said. 

To conceive, a woman needs an egg and a sperm. However, if the lady cannot reproduce eggs but has a healthy uterus, she can carry the pregnancy after getting an egg donor. 

The total cost to the patient, according to the specialist, is about Sh500,000.

This is because the patient looking for the donor will also have to incur the costs of treatment for the donor. 

The clinic says it will try to match the donor and the recipient as much as possible and they look forward to having a huge pool of volunteers. 

“If you only have one person there then they may not always match, you look for a huge pool of people who volunteer,” she said. 

Kuruga said they prefer young people because they are trying to eliminate genetic abnormalities that come with age.  

The volunteers will be required to present a national ID, academic credentials and a portrait photo. 

“The highest reproductive age for women is between 18 and 26. Their eggs are healthy and they also have a very good number,” she said. 

Dr David Thuo, a fertility specialist, said the biggest issue is for women is premature ovarian failing. 

“Here is where you find a lady is less than 40 years but then her eggs fail to work. We have women who have had surgeries that have involved them having their ovaries removed.

“Someone could have cysts that may have caused them to have ovaries removed, damage to the ovaries through radiation, accidents or previous surgery," he said. 

Thuo said the process gives hope to mothers who may not have had a chance to have children.