By  Sola Ogundipe

A FERTILITY expert, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, has described sex selection (enabling couples select the sex of their children) as an important aspect of Assisted Reproductive Treatment, ART.

Ajayi, who is Medical Director, Nordica Fertility Clinic, Lagos, Asaba and Abuja, told Good Health Weekly during a courtesy call to Vanguard last week that sex selection  for now, is welcome.

“I have a clinic in Asaba and talk to men from Onitsha and see how they feel when they do not have a male child and I am not going to ignore it.

“If it was criminal to carry out sex selection,I would not be involved, but this is a man that has a need that can be met scientifically  and we are not doing harm to anybody ion the process.”

Quoting the World Health Organisation, WHO, Ajayi stated: “WHO describes health as a state of complete physical, emotional and mental well being, so if you are a man and you are  have all girls, from the cultural point of view I do not think you will be healthy and my responsibility as a doctor is to help you if you are not healthy.

“There are two ways of doing sex selection – sperm sorting and PGD or you can combine the two. I do not see what is unethical about it so that’s why I say when we are setting up regulation for fertility treatment, we should be careful about it. He recalled that Nigeria’s Population Dynamics showed that  within the active age group, women are a little bit more than  men according to the CIA Report 2012.

“At the point we see that the ratio is more than 1:1 then it may be justified to stop it,  I have no problems with  that, but for now, it is not a problem for us. When we talk abou what is ethical we cannot just bring a cultural practice from Sweden over to Nigeria, we should look at what obtains in our country..” he remarked.