COVID-19 & LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(2)

VIROLOGISTS & EPIDEMIOLOGISTS: while many of us may have before the Covid-19 Pandemic heard or known of the existence of virologists and epidemiologists, it is more likely, few of us paid any serious attention to who they are and what they do. With the global devastation that Covid-19 is wrecking however, more of us are beginning to realize their importance with regards to the study of the virus and how it can be defeated. According to chron.com, Virologists are microbiologists who study microorganisms that quickly duplicate, resulting in the rapid spreading of viruses. Their primary work is to figure out how diseases like AIDS, SARS and hepatitis spread (I guess you can now safely add Covid-19 to the list), in order to prevent more rampant development and to assist in vaccine development. Virologists’ core duties involve researching, preparing, conducting and overseeing studies of microorganisms so as to better discern what contributes to their growth and spread of the virus in the bacteria and thus better predict the evolution of the virus in populations. Epidemiologists on the other hand, are involved in the study of epidemics and their spread over a defined period of time.

Because of Covid-19, we are now seeing epidemiologists and virologists more often on our TVs and paying attention to what they have to say about how to contain or stop the spread. In a country like Nigeria where certain fields are not very valued, some of us will, going forward, now learn to appreciate the importance of these fields and the difference the work they do, can make to whether we live or die.

VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS: one of the first things done in many countries was directing the closure of schools in order to both protect the children and contain the spread of the pandemic. The need to keep the children engaged and to ensure their education does not suffer as a result of school closure, necessitated a move from the 4 walls of the school classroom to virtual classrooms enabled by the use of video conferencing apps. Of course, online education and webinar classes were not uncommon for tertiary level education pre-Covid-19. What may be relatively new is the younger ones at the primary and secondary school levels receiving educational instructions online. Many are even already considering taking the virtual classroom for the younger ones beyond the Covid-19 era. It is of course, a whole different thing whether parents, who have had to work extra hard to keep their children engaged during this lockdown will be in support of any such move.

AREA BOYS, UNEMPLOYED YOUTHS; LEGACY OF CIVIL RULE?: this is more peculiar to Lagos State though it can also be found in other parts of the country to a smaller extent. The Covid-19 induced lockdown brought along its security challenges. While increase in domestic violence, cybercrimes and petty thefts had largely been anticipated, it is doubtful that a resurgence in armed robbery operations were expected. However, that was the situation some days before the end of the initial 2 weeks Federal Government lockdown in both Ogun and Lagos States. While officials of the Police Force tried to play down the resurgence of house to house robbery attacks even after parading some 200 or so suspects they arrested, the fact that most neighbourhoods drafted their men into some sort of emergency vigilante to ward off the criminals added to the hardships foisted by the lockdown.

There is no doubt that hunger became even more of a problem with many who could barely afford to feed well even at the best of times. However, it is my belief that a good majority of the boys/young men who terrorized hapless people during the period were guys who never had any real employment before the lockdown and a number of them most likely form part of the army of young men armed by our politicians during election periods and who afterwards use the weapons, including guns, that they were given by politicians, to commit crimes against ordinary folks.

If the army of young unemployed men who spend most of their days doing nothing but who have the desire to wear designer clothes and use expensive gadgets, did not give people of the South-West and particularly those in Lagos, much cause for concern before, what happened during the lockdown should make us sit down, or perhaps stand up and take action on how this ticking time bomb should best be safely defused.  

COVID-19 PANDEMIC & THE MANY LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(1)

Many people have said, and I agree for the most part, that the world will, as a matter of necessity make adjustments to the way many things are done post-Covid-19. While people desperately long to get their lives back post-Covid-19, those lives would have been greatly impacted in some ways by this pandemic. There is no doubt that for many, both individuals and corporate bodies, the return will be to a new normal. The fact that as at today, the 10th of June 2020, more than 7.26 million infections have been recorded and over 411,879 people have died across 188 countries and regions (according to data monitored by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering [CCSE] at Johns Hopkins University), and the near global restrictions of movement of people means that Covid-19 has wrought a lot of negatives. However, much as the pandemic has wreaked a lot of havocs globally, there are some positive changes that are already being made and will still need to be made in many countries of the world. The purpose of this article is to look at possible lessons to be learned and positive resultant changes that should be made both across the world and in Nigeria in the wake of this pandemic and its effects. Because there are several aspects to consider, this article will run in a few series.

CHINA AS THE WORLD FACTORY 

Long before Covid-19 started wrecking havoc in other countries of the world, its economic impact was already being felt in many countries chiefly because virtually everything that one can think of, are being either manufactured or assembled in China. The Western countries in pursuit of the maximum profit they can possibly make, decided the best thing was to tap into the huge population that China has, to get cheap labour and in so doing, outsourced virtually everything to China. This is the reason why when China started sneezing and coughing literally, the whole world started shivering with the cold of a slow in production of goods. It is time this trend is examined and tweaked to focus a bit less on just profit making and more on each country going back to either resuscitating or expanding its manufacturing capacity locally. The way many companies in the wake of scarcity of medical equipments particularly PPEs, redirected their focus towards local manufacture of this medical supplies, is a positive.

Beyond the capitalists’ actions which caused the world to rely almost entirely on China for most goods, the pandemic’s travel to other countries from China caused many countries to place restrictions on pharmaceutical goods and food supplies. The reason for the restrictions is not farfetched; each country wanted to be sure it would have enough supplies to meet its own needs. A country like Nigeria thus has to seriously work on producing many of tis needs for its large population. We have to go from a consuming country to a manufacturing country. On this, the CBN’s determination to push the country into local production of most the goods consumed in the country is a step in the right direction. 

Also, fact that Nigeria, while not having China’s population, is the most populous Black Country in the world with an estimated population of about 200 million people at least 65% of whom have been said to be below 35 years old should even be more of an incentive for us because what that means is that we have a very active population, and engaging that population productively will not only grow our economy, it will massively reduce our very high unemployment rate, reduce, poverty level and our over-independence on imported goods while also reducing crimes due to more people having opportunities to earn honest living.

                            Unemployment rate as at Q3 of 2018. Source: NBS

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

It was common pre-Covid-19 for people to assume that physical interactions reduced drastically with the advent of smartphones because many people appeared to prefer chatting than talking even when in physical proximity to each other. The meme of a child wondering whether he was downloaded by his parents who were always bent over their phones, I believe, is a very popular one and aptly describes how smart phones have changed human interactions. 

                                             Source of images: Pinterest

However, nothing contradicts our seeming preference for interaction behind the comfort of our phones more sharply than the speed with which this virus traveled, carried and transferred by humans, from the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province of China to most of the countries of the world. The lockdown has more so, shown very clearly that man truly is a social animal and even when virtual contacts seemed to be taking over, and sometimes, even when we will rather chat when we are in the same place instead of talk face to face, physical interactions have proved very important. I suspect that if only for a while, as the lockdown is being eased and after it eventually ends everywhere, we shall learn to treasure more, the friendship and interactions of the people in our lives. And perhaps, in countries in which so many died because of the selfishness and irresponsibility of a few, people would have learned to be a little less selfish and will be more open to acting in favour of the greater good.

THE ABULE ADO EXPLOSION, DREAMS LOST AND HUMANITY REGAINED

The first I heard about the explosion which happened on Sunday the 15^th of March in the Abule Ado area of Lagos State was via a text message from a friend which had advised that the area should be avoided because of a pipeline explosion. My first thought was, oh no! Not another explosion, when will the vandals learn? To be honest, I didn’t give too much thought to it again, I only hoped there wasn’t any fatality of misguided people who risk their lives and die in the process of scooping fuel. It wasn’t until very much later in the evening that I got to see on the news, the magnitude of the explosion and I got to hear that this time, the cause of the explosion might not have been pipeline vandalism that has come to form part of our sad story in this country.

Picture of Emmanuel & Chisom Udoakanobi, newly married couple courtesy of Vanguard Newspaper.

Since Sunday when the explosion happened, different media outlets have come out with different figures/numbers of casualties and fatalities. As at this morning, the Guardian newspaper, reported that 23 fatalities have been recorded as a result of the explosion. Many more people got injured and are being treated at a naval hospital not too far from the area of the explosion.

Something I noticed though in the midst of the gloom and darkness of the aftermath of the explosion, first in the much, (perhaps rightly?) vilified, social media, and now in the traditional electronic media, is the fact names and faces are being given to some of the victims of the explosion. The names we have heard and the faces we have seen certainly are very few compared with the numbers of people we have been told died from the explosion, but I definitely feel the fact we have heard names and seen faces, and in fact have a story or two about a few of the people killed in the explosion, is a starting point.

You might wonder why hearing the names of the people killed in the explosion and hearing their stories is so important. If you have followed events since Boko Haram started killing people en masse in Nigeria, all we are ever given are the numbers of people killed. We were never told the names of the dead, whether they had dreams and aspirations, and if any of them did, what those dreams and aspirations were, before their lives were brutally cut short by unfeeling terrorists. The story is the same with deaths recorded from accidents, from building collapses across the country, from deaths stemming from farmers/herders clashes etc. We never got to hear how the lives of the loved ones they left behind changed after these deaths. All we have always been told are numbers. No more. Just numbers that took the humanity from the dead and rendered them as no more than mere statistics, corpses.

To be sure, as someone who is developing a huge interest in numbers and statistics, numbers are very important. Studying numbers and analyzing them can go a long way in detecting problems and in knowing the kind of solution that can be employed. However, where people are killed either by deliberate or negligent actions or omissions to do certain important things, it is of the utmost importance that people killed by such actions or omissions to act are given flesh by the telling of their stories. By making their names public and through the telling of their stories including their dreams, aspirations and hopes for the future, we are made to realize that they may not have been too different from those of us still living. It is only through the telling of the experiences of the dead while they lived, that we really get to feel their loss much the same or at least similar to the sense of loss we would feel, had they been personally known to us. It is also through hearing their stories that we can make the decisions individually and collectively, to be better, to do better and to demand better from those charged with tasks which affect our lives.

It is in the light of the above that the celebration of the life of Rev, Sis. Dr. Henrietta Alokha, the Principal/Administrator of Bethlehem Girls College, who died in the process of ensuring the girls entrusted in her care by their parents, lived, need to be commended and amplified. It is also for this reason that we need to hear more about the newly married couple, Emmanuel and Chisom Udoakanobi (the latter, reportedly, a first class graduate of accounting), who were reportedly expecting their first child when they met with their untimely deaths. It is because the people affected by the explosion are way more than just numbers, that many of us rejoice upon hearing of the rescue of the 3 year old Favour from beneath the rubble of buildings affected by the explosion.

It is so we can properly mourn the loss of all those killed and sympathise and pray for those who survived but probably lost properties and livelihoods and for us to resolve and take action towards stopping recurrence of this kind of tragedy that we need to hear the names, see the faces and listen to the stories of all those killed in the explosion. We need to see the faces of the dead, so we can all appreciate that our individual actions and or inactions have consequences for ourselves as well as for others. At the end of the day, numbers are important, but our humanity given flesh by the stories of the humans who perish because of our actions or inactions, is way more important.  

USSD CHARGES: BANKS & TELCOS' BACK AND FORTH AND NCC'S DIRECTIVE

On Sunday, 19^th of October 2019, MTN sent a message to its subscribers informing them that from the 21^st of October, it would start charging the sum of N4 per every 20 seconds spent using the Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) platform. MTN concluded the message by directing its subscribers who wanted to know more about the charge to contact their bankers.

The following Tuesday, the Body of Bank CEOs published an advertorial in several newspapers denying that they asked MTN to charge any fee and that it was within the purview of telcos to decide whether to charge and what to charge for USSD transactions. It would seem going by the advertorial of the Body of Bank CEOs (BOBCEOs), other MNOs (Mobile Network Operators) namely Airtel, Globacom and 9Mobile had been secretly charging some fees (not sure how much) for a while without alerting the subscribers to it. So, I guess when some of us complain that our phone credits sometimes disappear without us making calls, we now have a reasonable idea where the credit has been going.

What is also apparent is the fact that the issue of who should (continue to) bear the burden of the customers’ use of the USSD platform has been on for quite a while. For instance, the NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission) on 23^rd of July this year, signed a Pricing Plan for the USSD platform and the Plan which came into effect on 1^st September 2019, recommended the price of N1.63K per USSD session and determined a session to be 20 seconds. The Plan also capped the price per USSD session at N4.89K.

What is however quite instructive is the fact that in Paragraph 27 of the Plan, the NCC stated that the motivation for the commissioning of a study to determine the right price for the USSD access was the allegation of excessive charges by financial institutions against telecommunications operators. In paragraphs 28, 29, 32 and 37 of the Pricing Plan, NCC mentioned repeatedly the complaints of the MNOs about the arbitrary and high charges of the Digital Financial Services Providers (DFIs) really, namely Banks and proposed engagements with the CBN towards a possible revenue sharing model which will not defeat the financial inclusion goal of the Federal Government.

What the NCC’s Pricing Plan, the BOBCEOs’ advertorial (which many have called a denial of MTN’s claim that the new cost emanates from the banks but which I see more as an admission of the claims sought to be denied) and the (leaked) memo to ALTON, tell me are the following:

§  Customers’ use of the USSD platform had always attracted charges

§  The USSD charges were previously borne by the Banks and other Financial institutions

§  At some point, the Banks complained about excessive charges by the Telecommunications companies (telcos) for their customers’ access to the USSD platform,

§  The telcos/MNOs believe the Banks are making too much money from USSD transactions and their arbitrary charges are defeating the financial inclusion goal of the Federal government,

§  The Banks told the MNOs/Telcos to commence operation of end-user billing much like they bill for calls and SMSs for USSD transactions.

§  The Telcos/MNOs complained about being placed in a disadvantaged position with regards to remuneration for USSD transactions to NCC and NCC commissioned a study on appropriate pricing for USSD transactions, hence the Pricing Plan signed in July 2019.

§  The Pricing Plan which came into effect on 1^st September 2019 determined a USSD session to be 20 seconds and put the price between N1.63k and maximum of N4.89k.

§  NCC mulled the idea of engaging CBN on a revenue sharing model which will be affordable to the customers and further financial inclusion.

§  Other Telcos apart from MTN seem to have commenced the implementation of the end-user billing proposed by the Banks without the subscribers’ knowledge (if Bullet No 2 of the BOBCEOs’ advertorial is believed).

While it is not clear whether NCC actually engaged the Banks and the CBN as proposed in their Pricing Plan, it is however obvious from the above that the feigned ignorance of the CBN, the Banks and the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy are just that; feigned.

In the Nigerian government’s usual gra-gra style, the Ministry of Communication has ordered a halt to the charging of fees by the Telcos for USSD transactions. The questions to be answered then are:

·       who pays for USSD transactions during this period?

·       Who is supposed to pay? What exactly is the N50 charged by Banks for electronic funds transfer for?

·       Were the Banks previously paying for the USSD transactions out of the N50?

·       Do the CBN and the Banks truly believe that additional charge raised by the telcos for USSD transactions will promote financial inclusion and help the cashless policy?  

In the revised Guidelines to Charges By Banks and Other Financial Institutions, Section 10.2 allows the Banks to charge N50 for transfer of funds below and above N10,000. Section 10.12 however allows for cost recovery where USSD transactions are concerned. The questions again are: who is entitled to recover the cost of the transaction? And from whom?

There is obviously no doubt that since the infrastructure of the Telcos are used in carrying out USSD transactions, they are entitled to be paid for it. The Banks who were paying however also had valid point in complaining about being charged for failed or extended transaction time as a result of network issues of the Telcos. It is thus my firm belief that for this issue to be resolved in a way that will further financial inclusion, both the Banks and the Telcos must explore the revenue sharing model proposed by the Telcos. No additional financial burden should be placed on the customer if truly, the CBN is serious about financial inclusion and the cashless policy.

SPERM DONATION AND THE URGENT NEED TO LIMIT THE NUMBER OF BIRTHS PER DONOR

About two weeks ago, I had read an article by an American woman who had, seven years after her divorce, decided that she was ready to have children. Because of the (infamous?) biological clock that women yet to have their own children are never allowed to forget, the woman at 37, decided to take the plunge into motherhood. This is normal enough. However, while it is also becoming quite normal for some women to decide that they do not want to get married (again for those who had married before, or at all for those who have not) and would rather be single mothers, what I thought is not yet quite that prevalent but which some research has proved otherwise (at least in Western countries), is the decision for a woman to decide to approach sperm banks to get her eggs fertilized and go the whole motherhood route without at least some man in the background if not by her side.

The woman in the article I read, did it and now has two children she is raising alone and without a father figure in those children’s lives.

Later on last week as well, Wendy Williams during the Hot Topics segment of her Show, mentioned the story of 25-year old unmarried Matteo[1], a Bachelorette contestant who, while a management consultant, also appeared to have chosen being a sperm donor as a vocation. This guy, at 25, claimed that his sperm has been used to produce 114 children! There doesn’t seem to be any information yet on whether all these children were born to women resident in the USA.

A number of countries particularly in Europe, have enacted laws with regards to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). In Africa, South Africa seems to be at the forefront in the enactment of a Law on ART. Kenya had a 2014 Bill on In-vitro Fertilzation (IVF) which appeared not to have been passed[2].

While there are a number of aspects like surrogacy, IVF etc to ART, the main focus of this write-up is the issue of how many offspring or live births a single donor’s sperm[3] should be used to produce and how to effectively regulate same especially in view of ART tourism by persons who for one reason or the other, including, but of course, not limited to cost and restrictive laws in their own countries, go outside their countries of residence to get sperms (or eggs, as the case may be).

In the UK, the maximum number of families a single donor can endow is 10[4]; six families in Spain and 12 families in Denmark, in the Netherlands one donor can contribute to 25 families while Taiwan allows just one[5]. Though there is no law at present governing ART in Kenya, it’s been reported that a donor can only be allowed to donate 3 times[6], in South Africa, sperm from a donor can only be used for 6 live births[7].

Whereas a number of countries in Europe as already mentioned, have laws limiting the number of families sperm from a single donor should be allowed to assist in producing children, the United States of America has no such law. At best, what the USA has is a voluntary guideline issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), of no more than 25 births per sperm donor in a population of 800,000 people. As has been mentioned however, this guideline is voluntary and in the absence of strict laws to ensure compliance, sperm banks can use a donor’s sperm to produce as many live births as they are able to[8].

In Nigeria, in spite of calls for regulation by medical practitioners and the Association for Fertility and Reproductive Health (AFRH), there is as yet no law to regulate ART. The closest to what may be regarded as some kind of regulation is the provision of Part VI of the National Health Act of 2014 which prohibits the procurement of human blood or tissue or any organ of a living being for money except reimbursement of reasonable costs incurred[9] and mandates the giving of consent by donors[10].

ART is however becoming quite popular in Nigeria and recruitment of sperm donors are reportedly being done in our higher Institutions, meaning the majority of sperm donors if reports available are correct, are undergraduates. And where sperm donors are prohibited from receiving payment for their donations, they are said to receive what is called Inconvenience allowance which, as at the writing of an article in the Guardian in January of 2017[11], was between N10,000 to N25,000 per visit depending on the donor’s personality, academic qualifications, physical attributes among other things. An undergraduate interviewed in the Saturday Magazine of the Guardian Nigeria article just mentioned, was in fact quoted to have claimed he was making up to about N200,000 to N250,000 a month just from donating his sperm. How true this claim is can only be wondered at.

Whether the claim is true or not, is however not the focus here. The real focus is, and rightly should be, as is being expressed all over the world where the practice of ART particularly around sperm (and egg) donations are concerned, how to regulate the number of live births a donor’s sperm or egg should be allowed to produce in view of the very real danger of incest an absence of regulation can cause. Besides the very real danger of incest among siblings is the issue of genetic diseases that may be passed on from the donors to the children especially in places where absence of laws or regulations make genetic testing optional.

In the United States and other Western countries, there already is a big outcry over the huge number of children some popular donors are fathering. And except for countries like Sweden, Australia, and the Netherlands which do not permit anonymous donations, tracking donor-conceived children and ensuring they do not meet and ignorantly have sexual relations with each other can be real difficult. The need to track donor-conceived children is one of the reasons some countries including the UK and Sweden prohibited anonymous donation.

But while the laws prohibiting anonymous donations may work to a limited extent to limit the number of children conceived by a single donor in those countries, they reportedly also had the effect of reducing the numbers of donors willing to come forward to donate. The laws also created fertility tourism with those who can afford it, taking trips to countries with more liberal or no laws, to purchase sperms and eggs. It was reported for instance that the Danish sperm Bank, Cryos, claims to have 1,400 active and real donors in Europe, about 200 in the US and that it sells sperms to over 100 countries worldwide[12].

Denmark is said to be about the most popular destination for ART tourism and Cryos mentioned earlier, is reported to have the largest bank of sperm in the world. Indeed, research has indicated that about 90% of Danish sperm goes to other EU countries. This is perhaps the reason Denmark in addition to pegging the number of families one donor’s sperm can be used for to 12, also went further to limit the number of conceptions such a donor’s sperm can be used to achieve internationally. And so in addition to the 12 families in Denmark, a donor’s sperm can only be used for 6 couples in Sweden and eight couples in Switzerland[13].

Just as important as regulating the number of donor-conceived children per donor is, so is creating a strong process of ensuring that donor-conceived children are aware they were conceived through the assistance of donors, and that they have means of knowing and identifying their half siblings and other members of their biological fathers (or mothers as the case may be)’ families. Indeed, under the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the right of a child to know his parents was given the status of a Fundamental Human Right.

In some countries, donor conceived children are entitled to information on their donor-fathers upon reaching the age of 18. In New Zealand for instance, a Registry for the purpose of access to information by both donors and donor-conceived children was established under the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act of 2004. A donor-conceived child can thus get access to information at the age of 18 or by Court Order at the age of 16[14]. 

Whereas the countries that have laws and binding regulations restricting the number of children that a single donor’s sperm should be allowed to produce can be said to have taken some steps, albeit inadequate, to address the issue of the danger of siblings ignorantly engaging in sexual relations, the major problem is with countries with no law or regulations and virtually all the countries on the African Continent because of the culture of stigma (or shame) surrounding the issue of infertility will be guilty here. This may be the reason a country like South Africa absolutely prohibits disclosure of both the donor and the recipient’s identities in spite of the fact that donors are required to register with the National Health Directorate and may choose to be informed when their donation produces a pregnancy[15].

In a country like Nigeria where data gathering in most aspects of our national lives is still a very big challenge, preventing incest among donor-conceived children especially where there is an absence of regulation and or monitoring will be impossible. Nigeria’s case will especially be difficult for a number of reasons besides the absence of a law to regulate. Nigeria generally has a history of regulatory agencies that focus more on revenue generation as opposed to their primary tasks of regulation and monitoring. Most important however is the stigma or shame around infertility which would mean that most couples will keep not only the fact of the donor assistance from their donor-conceived children, to forestall the possibility of the children ever finding out; they will also keep it from their close relatives and friends.

 Obviously, a lot of work will need to be done in Africa generally, and Nigeria in particular, to remove the shame and feeling that a woman or a man who for one reason or the other, is unable to have children, is less than whole. This should be done by our religious organizations and bodies who have a lot of influence on their followers. It may be time to start using religion for purpose other than dividing the populace.

While it at first appeared that Matteo’s boastful claim of having fathered 114 children through sperm donation, was far-fetched, some research on the subject soon showed that his claim may well be true. The story of Cynthia Daly who in a bid to connect her donor-conceived son to his half-siblings through a web-based registry but found that her donor as at 2011 had fathered 149 other children is a popular one[16]. There are reports also of other donors each of whom have been found to be biological fathers of hundreds of donor-conceived people. Some donors were reportedly shocked to have learnt that their sperms were used to conceive so many children[17] and one donor has an excel spreadsheet file to keep track of his offspring.

The lack of regulation in many countries have made it difficult to track exactly how many people globally were conceived using ART and more particularly, the Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). While sperm banks ask recipients to report births of donor-conceived children, only about 40% of births are for instance, reported in the US[18]. Countries with laws regulating ART while able to monitor births internally will be missing figures of those who travel outside to get sperms or eggs.

This writer’s recommendations for keeping near accurate track of births of donor-conceived children to avoid accidental incest are first; as is already the practice in most countries, each donor should be given a unique number through which donor-conceived people can identify themselves as offspring of the same donor. This should work even for countries like South Africa which prohibits disclosure of both donors and recipients identities.

There should also be a central registry much like the Donor Sibling Registry which was founded in 2000 by Wendy Kramer while trying to look for her 10-year old son’s half siblings. As at the 22^nd of May 2019, DSR claims to have 64,186 members inclusive of donors, donor-conceived people and parents of donor-conceived people. According to the figure on its website, the Registry has also successfully connected more than 17,060 offspring with their half siblings and or their donors.

While DSR has done very well in facilitating these connections, it is obvious that a Registry that will be supported by, if not all countries of the world, but majority of the countries will be required especially in view of tourism engaged in by persons either looking to evade their countries’ strict laws or just looking for sperm banks in a country with better donor testing. And for the Registry to work effectively, countries should have laws which compel parents/recipients to disclose to their donor-conceived children their status as having been so conceived. This is most important with respect to African countries whose people seem to have a culture of shaming people with fertility issues. And Sperm Banks will have to be regulated and mandated to keep records of both donors and recipients and to monitor the results after purchases.  

The Registry can still work very effectively with the identities of Donors undisclosed for countries which are still uncomfortable with disclosure of identities of the donors. Other information except the names of the donor can be put in the registry. With his/her unique number, a donor can also track the number of births that have been produced with his/her sperm or eggs. It should then be the choice of the donor to reveal or keep undisclosed, his/her identity.

With well over 5 million donor-conceived people[19] in the world today and with social media and technology shrinking the distance between humans, the danger of accidental incest between half siblings cannot be more real and the need for laws mandating Sperm Banks to drastically reduce the number of conception a single donor’s sperm is used to achieve cannot be over-emphasised.

An interesting point to close this write-up is the fact that single women like the woman in the first paragraph of this article, and gay couples make up a considerable percentage of recipients of ART (at least in the more developed countries even though countries like France does not allow donation to single women and gay couples and hence ART tourism).

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[1] After getting initial information which did not include the name and occupation of the Bachelorette contestant on the Wendy Williams Show, further information in the course of research into this topic was obtained in an article by Sarah Zhang published on May 13, 2019 in the The Atlantic. The article is titled The Trouble With Fathering 114 Kids.

[2] The 2014 Bill was apparently not passed and there’s a report that a similar Bill was reintroduced into the Kenyan Parliament in 2018. The fate of the re-introduced Bill is not known.

[3] It should be noted that there are couples and singles who received donations from people they know. These people are called known donors, and in some countries with laws governing ART, such known donors can be sued for child maintenance. Conversely, known donors can also sue recipients to allow them have access to the donor-conceived child. Though, there may have been written agreements between the known donor and the recipients, Courts, particularly in the US will usually disregard such agreements with respect to the paternity of a child. This piece is however not focused on known donors but really on donors who donate through sperm banks mostly anonymously, whether for pecuniary gains or for altruistic purposes.

[4] Human Fertilsation and Embryology Act, 1990.

[5] A lack of Regulation has created enormous genetic families. Now they are searching for one another by Ariana Eunjung Cha published in the washingtonpost.com on 12^th September 2018.

[6] The number of times a donor is allowed to donate does not however take care of the number of live births the donated sperm can or will be used for. Since each sample donated can still be divided and put into several vials, it means many live births can be achieved even from a single donation.

[7] See: The Rising Debate – Anonymity of Gamete Donation in South Africa. www.aevitasfertilityclinic.co.za published on August 16, 2017. See also provisions of the National Health Act of South Africa.

[8] The American Fertility Society (AFS)’s Guidelines also recommends 10 pregnancies per donor or under 10 if recipients are members of an isolated subgroups of the population: www.scholarship.law.duke.edu

[9] Section 53(1) of the National Health Act 2014.

[10] Section 48(1)(a), National Health Act 2014.

[11] Sperm Donor’s Nightmare: Have I fathered 500 Children Already? Written by Franca Osakwe in www.guardian.ng on 7^th January 2017.

[12] See the article published in theguardian.com/science/2018 titled America’s hottest export? Sperm, written by Soo Youn on August 15, 2018.

[13] Ibid

[14] Regulated Sperm Donation: Why requiring exposed donation is not the answer by Vanessa L. Pi. Published on March 8, 2009.

[15] The Rising Debate – Anonymity of Gamete Donation in South Africa. Supra.

[16] See publication in www.nytimes.com One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring written by Jacqueline Mroz published on September 5, 2011. By the article earlier cited and titled The Trouble with Fathering 114 Kids, Cynthia Daly’s donor’s children had risen to 189!

[17] One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring. Jacqueline Mroz (Supra)

[18] Regulating Sperm Donation: Why requiring exposed donation is not the answer. Vanessa L. Pi.

[19] ART in Europe: Usage and Regulation in the context of Cross-Border Reproductive Care by Patrick Praig & Melinda C. Mills published on 13^th January 2017. https://www.link.springer.com.