5 minutes agoFor a million euros, the fertility centre is still dysfunctional
Periskopi(4 years ago)
(4 years ago)Many women from Kosovo are willing to pay thousands of euros for the IVF fertility method, without guarantee of successful pregnancies. The first “Hand in Skopje has cost me 60,000 euros... Then, I went to Turkey, where it cost me over three thousand euros. We should have taken [...]
The first “Hand in Skopje has cost me 60,000 euros... Then, I went to Turkey, where it cost me over three thousand euros. We also had to get debts to prove this process”, says Light, whose true identity is known for Radio Free Europe. The light, despite its efforts, has not been able to get pregnant.
IVF is a fertility method when a couple cannot have children naturally, but neither is the IVF 100 percent successful.
Through this procedure, the medical team removes eggs from a woman's ovaries and then fertilizes them with sperm in the laboratory. Fertilized embryo is given several days to grow and then placed in the woman's womb. The process usually lasts four to six weeks.
Merita, another woman who claims to have gone through this procedure, is a boy's mother today.
“has been a laboring, exhausting and costly process. I'm just talking about the IVF process that has cost over three thousand euros”, she tells Radio Free Europe.
Merit says IVF did it outside Kosovo.
In Kosovo, this procedure is conducted in six hospitals for gynaecology-obstetrics and infertility, which likewise costs several thousand euros.
At the University Clinical Centre in Kosovo, exactly at the Gynecology Clinic, construction of the IVF department has started since 2020. But despite the vows of KKUK leaders that women will be able to receive IVF services from 2021, they have not yet started.
“Works are at the bottom, but [residence] has not been completely finalised with some systems testing, but also staff training for use of” systems, the KKUK administration says.
Free Europe Radio has managed to see the environment of this centre, where almost all the work seems done.
Kosovo Hospital Clinical and University Service Director Valbon Krasniqi confirms that the works have been realised, but all necessary equipment, according to him, has not been bought.
“We are waiting for financial means to secure medical equipment. Based on the assessments of medical equipment and management services of the Gynecology Clinic, about 1m 1.2m euros are needed, Krasniqi says.
He adds that requirements have been made for the means to be provided within the framework of the annual budget for USKKUK, which divides the Government of Kosovo, but that this, so far, has not happened.
Krasniqi says potential donors have also been sought, but this too has proved unsuccessful.
We have thought that providing financial means would probably be the easiest component of this project, but that, in fact, it is proving to be the most difficult”, Krasniqi says.
In the Ministry of Health, there are no unwarranted delays in implementing the IVF project.
According to officials there, the coronary pandemic, which erupted in March 2020, has shifted the focus to public health emergencies.
As far as funds are concerned with the IVF department say the QKUK had enough budgets, given the planning that was made in 2020.
Officials there say the task force that has recently formed the Health Ministry will now make an assessment of the realisation of the tasks and financial needs.
The co-operative group, which is guided by KKUK's own representatives, must as soon as it has carried out the plan and show when the service [can begin] IVF]”, says a statement by the Health Ministry, sent Radio Free Europe.
Gynecologist Landrit Beytullahu, who heads the working group for operating the centre for IVF, says optimistic that it will be able to start working within months.
Regarding perceived delays, he says they occurred, because “there was no continuation of work”.
“We are in the process of working. The commission [worker group] has been formed, which consists of KKUK and the Ministry of Health members. It will also hold meetings during the annual holiday season to realise the plan by September 15th of this year”, Bejtullahu says.
Gynecology Clinic Director within KKUK, Jakup Ismaili, confirms that there are proper and sufficient staff to carry out the IVF fertility method.
Radio Free Europe has contacted leaders of a private hospital, which does the IVF procedure, but they have not wanted to give evidence of how many cases they have within a year and how successful they are.
The IVF procedure in Kosovo is conducted on the basis of an administrative directive of the Ministry of Health.
For this service abroad, the Health Insurance Fund in Kosovo does not accept applications, as it does not belong among essential services and does not relate to those services related to the survival of patients.
According to the World Health Organization, the inability to produce children naturally or sterility affects millions of people of reproductive age worldwide. Estimates suggest that 48 million couples and 186 million individuals live in sterility.
In Kosovo there is no record of how many women of reproductive age use infertility treatments to get pregnant.
In the United States, for example, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that some 7 million women annually use such treatments, where IVF is among the most popular.
