Seventeen years after she was born through In Vitro
Fertilisation, Nigeria’s first test tube baby, Miss Hannatu Kupchi, has made
history by securing admission into a Hungarian University to study medicine.
The medical doctor that supervised the first IVF
experiment in Nigeria, Dr. Ibrahim Wada, said Hannatu’s birth on
February 11, 1998, at Nisa Premier Hospital in Abuja, signaled a significant
revolution in the practice of medicine in Nigeria.
Speaking on Sunday in
Abuja during a brief reception and presentation of an award to Hannatu Kupchi,
Wada said it would be very difficult to make a an elaborate statement on such
occasions.
Hannatu promised to break barriers and become a doctor in
order to help families and parents, who are unable to give birth through the
traditional means.
She said by her birth, misconceptions about IVF were
broken and that many more children had been brought into this world as well.
“I barely made it beyond the cut off mark. God helped me.
I am going to try my best and make everyone proud. I am studying Medicine
because I want to be a doctor. I want to study it because I want God to use me
to help families who suffered what my parents went through,” she said.
In his remarks, Hannatu’s father, Mr. Hosea
Kupchi, said the couple waited for 13 years without a child.
He added, “We had 13 years of marriage without a child
and we went through the orthodox method without any success. But along the
line, my sister-in-law told me that there was one Dr. Wada that had been
helping couples. That is how we came.
“Then challenges came again on how to let the world know
that we have achieved this feat locally here in Nigeria. There are a lot of
couples out there that are not ready to speak out. One, there is the issue of
stigmatisation, but I said to myself that nobody light the candle and put it
under the bed.”
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