The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology on Monday at its annual conference in Barcelona, Spain, said that it is preparing to test the effectiveness of making low-cost in vitro fertilization procedures available throughout Africa, the AP/Google.com reports.

Experts said more than 30% of women in Africa cannot have children, and an estimated 80 million people in developing countries are infertile. According to the AP/Google.com, women in Africa are sometimes "ostracized as witches or social outcasts" if they cannot have children. "The cost of being infertile in Africa is much greater than in the West," Oluwole Akande, an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, said.

Some officials said that introducing low-cost infertility treatments in Africa would be a "tough sell," considering limited funds for public health, the AP/Google.com reports. The World Health Organization traditionally has focused on boosting family planning and preventing sexually transmitted infections than on addressing infertility on the continent. "It's definitely going to be viewed as a lower priority," Sheryl Vanderpoel, a reproductive health expert at WHO, said, adding that if lower-cost procedures are proven to be effective, the emphasis might change.

The lower-cost procedure being developed by ESHRE -- which uses fewer medicines and expensive lab equipment -- will cost less than $200, compared with $10,000 for treatments in wealthy countries. Rather than use an incubator to create an embryo, a water bath could be used, Willem Ombelet, head of an ESHRE task force on infertility in developing countries, said. In addition, less expensive medicines would stimulate women's ovaries to produce more eggs, and spending could be further reduced by using low-cost needles and catheters.

Since fewer eggs would be produced by using lower-cost drugs, the success rate would be lower, the AP/Google.com reports. Ombelet estimated that the lower-cost IVF procedure would result in pregnancy about 15% of the time, compared with about a 20% success rate in wealthy countries. According to the AP/Google.com, a small number of women have been treated for infertility in Khartoum, Sudan, and other projects are expected to begin soon in South Africa and Tanzania. U.S. researchers also are working on developing an even less expensive IVF procedure that might be more effective, the AP/Google.com reports (Cheng, AP/Google.com, 7/7).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.