Let’s talk about orange. Research shows that the colour orange promotes a sense of wellness and shared emotional energy: compassion, passion, and warmth. It’s supposed to help you to recover from a wounded heart. No surprise then that the 20-woman team at the Trinidad and Tobago IVF and Fertility Clinic were rocking their orange to mark Infertility Awareness Week 2023 – April 23-29.
“Staring down at negative pregnancy tests month after month can be soul crushing,” said founder and medical director of the clinic Dr Catherine Minto-Bain. “Infertility Awareness Week is a way to show the compassion and understanding for the thousands of people struggling with infertility.”
Infertility in TT is stigmatised – a source of shame for both men and women. Like many other countries, we just don’t talk about it.
“Infertility is a medical condition, but we attach blame and moral judgment to it,” Minto-Bain said.
“Infertility Awareness Week is our opportunity to change that conversation.”
Over decades of operation, the TTIVF Fertility Centre has kept a close eye on trends in this country. Some of their findings: About one in six people struggle to have a child, infertility isn’t a “woman problem” – more cases of infertility can be traced back to men – and we wait too long to get expert advice to help us conceive.
“Man or woman, your clock is ticking. Fertility starts to decline after 35 for women, and gradually for men in their 30s and 40s,” Minto Bain said.
“People wait too long, partly because they just don’t know that after a certain age their eggs or sperm are less likely to make a baby, but also because they waste time trying all sorts of tisanes, herbs and supplements that just don’t help. So by the time they get to us, they’ve lost precious time.”
[caption id="attachment_1013651" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Members of staff at the TTIVF clinic wear orange head gear in commemoration of Infertility Awareness Week from April 23 to 29. -[/caption]
Minto Bain and her team have seen more than 10,000 patients and they’ll tell you that Caribbean women have unique fertility challenges. Women of East Indian descent are more likely to have polycystic ovaries syndrome and possibly endometriosis, while women of African descent are more likely to go through early menopause and run out of eggs in their early 40’s.
“It’s definitely not the same in other countries. We are very diverse, and understanding that diversity is key to successful treatment of infertility.”
Minto-Bain said TTIVF has quietly brought more than 2,700 healthy babies into the world through medical interventions like in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intra uterine insemination (IUI). The first IVF baby in the English Caribbean (a boy) was born in TT in 1997 with TTIVF's help. She and her staff have gone on to break new ground ever since then, with the Caribbean’s first IVF frozen embryo baby and first egg donor baby in 2001.
TTIVF is also the first fertility clinic in the region to be internationally accredited, opting for European accreditat
