Aggregated News
The Walking Egg project is bringing IVF to rural communities in South Africa.
This week I’m sending congratulations to two sets of parents in South Africa. Babies Milayah and Rossouw arrived a few weeks ago. All babies are special, but these two set a new precedent. They’re the first to be born following "simplified" IVF performed in a mobile lab.
This new mobile lab is essentially a trailer crammed with everything an embryologist needs to perform IVF on a shoestring. It was designed to deliver reproductive treatments to people who live in rural parts of low-income countries, where IVF can be prohibitively expensive or even nonexistent. And it seems to work!
While IVF is increasingly commonplace in wealthy countries—around 12% of all births in Spain result from such procedures—it remains expensive and isn’t always covered by insurance or national health
providers. And it’s even less accessible in low-income countries—especially for people who live in rural areas.
People often assume that countries with high birth rates don’t need access to fertility treatments, says Gerhard Boshoff, an embryologist at the University...