What options are available for infertile women?

According to the Global Journal of Medicine & Public Health, childlessness leads to social problems such as violence against women, exploitation, and divorces, all of which are significantly higher in infertile women.
Yet, Health Canada states that men are solely responsible for infertility in about 30 per cent of those cases, and contribute to half the cases overall.
Indeed, a Professor of Reproductive Endocrinology and IVF specialist who gave Africa its first test tube baby, Oladapo Ashiru notes that 1 out five couples experience infertility.
This is the light in which we approach Mrs. Agatha Ogoegbu’s fertility issue.

What infertile women go through
Mrs. Ogoegbu’s journey to motherhood has been a harrowing experience. Married for years without a child of her own, in the quest to get solution to the nagging problem, one of her doctors told her that she had fibroid, which the doctor said must be operated on if she must conceive a child. That was the beginning of the journey to nowhere for the woman who claims to be in her “forties but less than 50.”
The beginning
Agatha narrates: “I had problem of infertility, and my brother-in-law introduced me to Dr. Victor Anyaegbuna, proprietor of the Levan Medical Centre, Festac Town, Lagos State, who recommended surgical procedure to have what he described as fibroid removed from my uterus.” That was in 2003.
“I had the operation at Levan on October 3, 2003, done by Dr. Augustine Umoh, a consultant with the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital; but two days after, I started to vomit; I could not gas and I developed a protruded stomach; I could not urinate, and I had what the doctors diagnosed as intestinal obstruction. They then tried to pass the accumulated fluid in my stomach through my nose. Even after days of observation, I wasn‘t getting better. I was advised to go for some medical tests, which I did, at which point it was discovered that there were some adhesions in my stomach, leading to intestinal obstruction. Anyaegbuna thus recommended another operation to solve the problem.
Infertility: Causes, symptoms and treatment (See video)
“So, on October 11, I had the second operation, performed by Dr. Bobby Iwe in the same hospital. I also received eight pints of blood. But then, my condition worsened almost immediately after, and I stayed in the hospital for 10 weeks. When I saw that my condition wasn‘t improving, I asked the hospital to discharge me, but the hospital director, Dr. Anyaegbuna, refused, saying I had to settle the hospital bill I had incurred.
Cost of a nagging problem
“The initial bill was N150,000 ($1,000), out of which I paid N80,000 upfront. By the time I had the second operation, the hospital said I had incurred an additional bill of N456,000, which was not affordable for me,” Agatha said.
She informed that she was only discharged after she and her husband, Mr. Sunday Ogoegbu, pledged to use a landed property worth N1.5m as a collateral, to be released to them once the hospital bill was settled.
According to the traumatised woman, when the pains she was feeling, following the second operation, did not abate, she visited Dr. Francis Duru of Clement Hospital, Akoka, Lagos, who treated her for abdominal pain “for some time.”
At what age are women likely to experience infertility?
“When he saw that the problem persisted, he referred me to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital,” Agatha said.

Her story started taking a twist when, according to her, LUTH refused to take her in on the basis that it had no access to her medical history. “Levan Hospital refused to give me my medical record,” Agatha said.
Following LUTH’s alleged rejection (Agatha could not correctly name the exact doctor she saw there, or the department she dealt with), a family friend introduced her to Dr. Obi Ubakanma, a gynaecologist with St. Cecilia Hospital, Alagomeji Yaba, Lagos.
Agatha said Ubakanma succeeded in retrieving her medical record from Levan after the doctor had placed several threatening calls to Anyaegbuna.
Women weigh in (See video)