It is used to be told that women from a certain part of Nigeria were more likely to have multiple births.
And that your chances of being a 'Mama Ibeji' or 'Mama Ibeji Plus' was based on your genes. Now things have changed.
Today, more and more women are increasingly becoming mothers to twins or triplets or more. This trend has been noticed all over the world and in Nigeria as well.
Some reports even suggest that the birth rate for triplets and other higher order multiples has risen by a staggering 423 percent since 1980.
A lot of people assume that this increase is due to more and more women using IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) to conceive. Now a new study suggests that this is not so.
Researchers suggest that drugs that help women are now responsible for the rise in high-risk multiple births, and not IVF.
They state that the number of multiple births of triplets or more are due to fertility drugs like clomiphene citrate (clomid) and injectable hormones.
They suggest that this is because fertility drugs are cheaper and easier to use than IVF. In Nigeria for example, the average cost of an IVF cycle costs between N800,000 and N1m, depending on the fertility clinic and the part of the country the clinic is based.
Fertility drugs like clomid are readily available and can be purchased from some pharmacies in the country and a month's supply of the 'generic brand clomid' can range between N5,000 to N7,000 (more or less).
A good number women self diagnose and take this drugs themselves. For example, Bimbo Ayelabola, the Nigerian woman who travelled to Britain to give birth to quintuplets (5 babies), is reported to have conceived her babies after taking, high-dose fertility tablets she purchased over the counter in Lagos.
Women should however proceed with caution when self prescribing fertility drugs. In addition to the common side effects, some studies show that Clomid can put women at an increased risk for cancer.
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