African Woman and Child Feature Service

Fertility experts are appealing to well educated and professional men to come out and donate sperms to meet the demand and the preferences of an increasing number of couples and single women looking for sperms from a particular breed of people.

At the moment, those seeking donated sperms are finding it difficult to get donors with the profile that meets their preferences. While they want sperms from people with higher education, good body build, nice skin colour, and successful men, the majority of the donated sperms do not meet this criterion.

Almost all of those willing to donate are low income earners, some of whom have not gone past primary school. They are either casual labourers or unemployed, who are ready to donate the sperm in return for transport reimbursement which they can then use to put food on the table. In one case, a couple who were looking for sperm donated by a graduate had to wait for several months to get one.

In other instance, an Arab man who last year insisted on having a sperm donated by an Arab has been unable to get it.

“For couples or women who are looking for donated sperm, their preference of a person with specific characters such as intelligence, having well paid job, handsome and tall, are not easy to meet with the current sperm donors,” says Dr Solomon Wasike, a consultant gynecologist.

Dr Wasike, who is leading a team of doctors who are advocating for establishment of well designed sperm banks across the country to respond to the steady increasing demand, says they are going to appeal to the middle and high class people to donate their sperm as well.

“Sperm donation should not be left to the poor or just students, even high educated, professional, and successful men can make such a contribution to humanity.”

This attempt to impress upon a wide variety of men to donate sperm is coming at time when, unlike in the past, couples and single women are turning to donated sperm to enjoy parenthood. Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 16,000 babies are delivered every year using donated sperm.

At the Nairobi IVF Centre, which remains one of the clinics that has registered success rate of close to 50 percent and has delivered over 124 babies, the number of individuals using donated sperm is on the rise.

By end of last month, 102 of the 563 people who had received IVF services at the clinic, used donor sperms in search of a baby compared to less than 20 who did so in 2007. Out of the donated sperm, 14 children have been born- 10 girls and 4 boys. Another 18 on-going pregnancies are from donated sperms.

Out of those who used this donor sperms, 17 were single women who received them from anonymous donors.

For the 85 couples who used donor sperms, they did so because the man did not have any sperms. In an overwhelming number of the cases, the men who need donated sperm are those suffering from a condition known as Azoospermia, a severe form of male factor infertility, where a man has no sperm in his ejaculate or semen.

Such development maybe due to blockages of sperm ducts or sperm production problems, which make it impossible for the sperm to mix with the semen and get transported into the woman to fertile the egg.

But for the single women, the preference of the donor sperms is prompted by as many reasons as their number. The main one however is they want to be single parents by choice avoiding the hassles of having a man in their lives and due to reducing stigma about single parenthood.

Others choose this route to parenthood because they feel they are emotionally and financially secure, are unable to find Mr right, come from a family where the father abused the mother, are divorced, or are encouraged and supported by friends and their families to choose single parenthood.

In developed countries, some of the women who use donated sperm are lesbian couples who wish to have a child. The trend across the world shows that women who chose to be single parents are in most cases aged over 35 years, and well-educated and financially stable career women. Their children are more likely to lead better lives.

Use of the donor sperm by these single women and couples is erasing the stigma and belief that an infertile man cannot use the sperm of another fertile man.

Still, whether a single woman or a couple, those looking for donor sperms are want those that meet high standards - good education, a good job, and tall and of a certain colour and tribe-some of which the doctors cannot meet at the time the sperm is needed.

Dr Joshua Noreh of Nairobi IVF Centre, says while the recipients looks for donor sperms that can result in a child who can do well in school and has other useful attributes, their choice is limited to what is in the sperm bank.

“The recipients have their preferences, but they only get what we have in the bank. But what they are concerned about first is the skin colour, education background, ethnicity and body build of the donors,” says Dr Noreh.

“Other qualitative preferences, which are equally important, come after the couple’s or the woman’s physical characteristics have been fulfilled.

The clinic has to try it level best to look for acceptable profiles of individuals who have donated sperms to their sperm bank.

Life is only made easier when the recipient comes with his or her donor, which in most cases is rare and not encouraged by doctors due to future complications if the donor and the recipient know each other.

But other doctors argue while Kenyan men are uneasy when it comes to donating sperm, the problem is serious with well-off men who are not coming out to do such donations. Majority of these well-off men seem to be unwilling to donate sperm because of the locations where the sperm banks are located. They propose that sperm donations centre be opened across the country in high class private hospitals that have fancy rooms.

Dr Wasike says they want to start appealing to people of all races and class to feel free to donate their sperms.

A couple of years ago, the sperm bank at Kenyatta National Hospital was opened, but has remained inactive for sometime now. Sources within the hospital say majority of those who donated the sperm were men who wanted to get the little money given as transport reimbursement.

In the past, some have even been willing to give sperms on condition that they are paid, going against the principle of donation that guides such practices. Doctors have refused agree to this, saying men should give their sperms for free just the way blood donors do. They are only willing to give transport reimbursement.

“What seems to be the incentive that made the unemployed and lowly paid men agree to donate sperm at KNH was the transport money they later used to buy food. This is not incentive enough for the well resourced men and we need to find non-financial ways of encouraging them to come,” says a source at the KNH hospital, who sought as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

This dilemma to pay or not pay that is facing fertility experts is happening at time when the numbers of men without sperm count is on the rise. At Dr Noreh’s clinic, an increasing number of men are being diagnosed without sperm count. According to the recent data from the clinic, over 15 percent of the men had no sperm in their ejaculate. They need another fertile man to come to their aid.