A physician, Dr Nkechi Asogwa, recently in Lagos cautioned young girls against commercial egg donations to prevent life-threatening ailments later in life.
Egg donation is when a woman gives her eggs to another woman anonymously, altruistically and unselfishly so she can have a child.
Asogwa, who is also the Secretary, Doctors Health Initiative, a civil rights group, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that egg donation could be hazardous to the wellbeing of the donor.
“Most of the time, the victims who are the ones donating their eggs do not know the medical consequences associated with egg donor programme.
“I have heard recently that university girls, of ages 18 to 25, are being urged or at least, appealed to, to donate egg for monetary terms.
“So, for as little as N20,000 to N30,000, a young girl enters into an egg donor programme. Now, she is not told the consequences or some of these acts.
“We have major issues, we have liver, kidney failure that could occur, Ovarian Hyper stimulation Syndrome, we have stroke.
“You can have pulmonary embolism from the blood clot because of the hyper stimulation and the hormonal drugs that are being injected into these girls to be able to harvest the organ.
“Patients have been known to die in the process of retrieving the egg.
“Every other organ surrounding the ovary is at risk; not to talk about the bleeding, infertility, psychological and emotional side
effects.
“So, these girls are left open to future problems.“ (NAN)
