Surrogacy has become the new normal for couples across the globe and it has started gaining ground in Ghana.
Surrogacy is an arrangement, often supported by a legal agreement, whereby
a woman who is the gestational carrier agrees to bear a child for another person or people, who will become the child’s parent(s) after birth.
This phenomenon, according to a specialist general surgeon at the Cape Coast teaching hospital, Dr. Emmanuel Ofori is due to the high rate of infertility amongst couples in the country.
According to him, even as surrogacy continues to be stigmatized around the world, many couples choose it.
The reason, he explains, is due to the many conditions that affect women which makes it difficult in delivery.
“So, if you look at it currently, some fertility centers are doing this In vitro fertilization for about 500 surrogates per year,” he said.
Cost of Surrogacy
In Ghana, it cost about $49,000 to have a baby from a gestational carrier and Dr. Ofori believes the cost covers everything from selecting and preparing a surrogate through to the fertilization process, pregnancy, and delivery.
Dr. Ofori added that twin pregnancy however demands an additional cost of $5000.
Explaining in an interview on the Atlantic wave on Tuesday, the conditions that lead couples to opt for surrogacy, Dr. Emmanuel Ofori said individuals with hole in heart, cardiac defects, bad kidney conditions among other diseases are at risk of death should they get pregnant.
He, therefore, said such people are often advised to opt for surrogacy to prevent them from being numbered as part of the country’s maternal mortality.
Though Dr. Ofori indicates that surrogacy is an expensive venture, Dr. Rosemond Hiadzi, a sociologist at the University of Ghana, indicated that surrogacy gives women with fertility problems an option to have children of their own thereby satisfying the ideals and demands of society.
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Source: Petra Benigna Grant-Afful
