Dubai: When a Palestinian specialist in in-vitro fertilisation, Dr Salem Abu Al Kheizaran was contacted by Mohannad’s mother some five years ago to help her have a test-tube baby with her imprisoned husband, he couldn’t say no.
On the contrary, he helped her through the process.
It is the agony of prisoners’ wives — coupled with the passage of years where women reach an age where it becomes be difficult for them to become pregnant — that made Dr Abu Al Kheizaran go the extra-mile and “try the impossible to help these people, especially their wives,” he said.
As an example, a 46-year-old woman went to see the doctor as she was trying to get pregnant following the recent release of her husband from jail. When he was sent to jail, she was 20 — now her chances are slim.
“After Mrs Dallal visited me in 2006 and told me of her and Ammar’s desire to have a test-tube baby and to choose the sex of the child, I told her ‘yes, this is possible from a scientific point of view. But there are two issues you need to handle first: the religious view and bringing the sperm of the husband’.”
Religious clerics agreed to the idea, political groups, across the entire spectrum supported it, and the whole movement of Palestinian prisoners threw its weight behind it, he said.
“Society became ready to embrace such a move,” the British-educated Dr Abu Al Kheizaran told Gulf News in a telephone interview from Nablus, where he established the first centre of its kind for test-tube babies in the West Bank in 1995.
Another piece of advice was to prepare the two families, and to win support of the entire neighbourhood.
After a while, the “operation became a demand,” by the local community.
Five years later, the doctor obtained the sample, he said, without explaining how.
“Trust me, I don’t know about this. Ask me anything after I received it,”
Dr Abu Al Kheizaran commented on press reports that the sample was smuggled from the prison.
“I received the sample from the wife, in the presence of her sister and six males from her family and the husband’s family.”
“Part of the sperm was non-viable because the sample was not correctly preserved and transferred,” he said.
Yet, the doctor divided the viable part into five smaller parts, to pave the way for more attempts in case there was a need to repeat it.
In a span of one year, there were three attempts.
The third attempt saw Mohannad brought into the world on Sunday night.
“Parenthood is a right for everybody. Nobody should be deprived regardless of their race, religious and sex. This is a natural right… Now we should demand that sperm samples be transferred from prisons officially and in a scientific way, even with the help of the Red Cross. This is a right for the prisoners,” he said.
Prisoners have the right to form families, and if they can’t, we can help them to have their own families,” Dr Abu Al Kheizaran said.
Mohannad has become the first test-tube baby to be born to an imprisoned father. Three specialists, including Dr Abu Al Kheizaran attended the C-section, along with two nurses and an anaesthesiologist.
