Childless couple get baby after fertility funding

Star: JOHOR BARU: For nine years, Shahrul Zamri Sariff and Safiah Daud tried everything to conceive a child.
They never considered advanced fertility methods because of the cost until they sought the help of the Pahang-based Tunku Azizah Fertility Foundation, which agreed to partially fund them for a fertility programme.
Through the procedure called Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), Safiah, 35, a primary schoolteacher, was able to conceive.
She gave birth to Nadine Azizah Shahrul, a healthy 2.26kg, at the Sultanah Aminah Hospital at 4am yesterday.
“We are so happy when we got a call from the foundation offering RM6,500 for the ICSI procedure,” Safiah said, adding that her 33-year-old husband, Shahrul, a fireman at a chemical company in Pasir Gudang, had called the foundation last year after hearing about it from a relative.
The foundation is a charitable organisation which funds two-thirds of the total cost of fertility treatment for married Malaysian couples.
The foundation also aims to educate and improve on reproductive health and the prevention of infertility.
The ICSI procedure for Safiah cost about RM15,000.
Safiah’s treatment began in January and involved artificially fertilising her eggs before the embryo was placed in the uterus.
“My husband could not believe it when six weeks later, eight out of 15 eggs were fertilised,” Safiah said, adding that the doctors injected three embryos into her uterus.
“We were told that I was initially expecting twins,” she said, adding that she lost one of the babies when she began to bleed during the third month of pregnancy.
The couple planned to have more babies.
The foundation has decided to fully fund Safiah’s treatment.
In a statement yesterday, secretary Hamimah Abd Karim said the foundation would refund the amount paid by the couple.
Hamimah said Nadine was the first Malay-Muslim baby born under the foundation’s sponsorship.
“Out of more than 97 couples sponsored, 12 have had successful pregnancies. Nadine is the fifth baby to be born,” she said.