Where science meets faith and waiting turns to joy
By JOAN JONES
Ekpoma is not the place people expect to hear good news about IVF. When you mention In-Vitro Fertilization, people think Lagos, Abuja, or London. But for some years now, couples have been quietly getting results here.
At the Virtue Specialist Hospital, along that same road where students and traders pass every day, babies are being conceived in a miraculous yet un-expected way. And within its walls, under the visionary leadership of Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel, MBBS, FWACS, FMCOG, FICS, PF-IART, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist / Fertility Specialist and MD/CEO of Virtue Specialist Hospital, Ekpoma, Edo State, a quiet, profound, sacred art is being perfected, the Art of In-Vitro Fertilization, the art that takes the tears of a childless woman and turns it into the laughter of a child.
For many, IVF is just three letters. For those who have walked the long, lonely corridor of waiting, it is the alphabet of hope. It is the answer to years of midnight prayers, of fingers pointed in the village square, of questions that wound like thorns: “When will you give us a child? Is your womb asleep? What is wrong?” At Virtue Specialist Hospital, Ekpoma, that question has found an answer, not in noise, but in noble science, a science championed and domesticated by Dr. Olugbenga.
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What is this art called IVF? Oh, it is poetry in a petri dish. It is biology bowing to divinity. In the natural order, conception is a hidden mystery that happens in the secret temple of a woman’s body. In the art of IVF, that mystery is gently, respectfully brought into the light of a world-class laboratory. The woman is cared for with injections that coax her ovaries, not by force, but by persuasion, to bring forth many eggs, where usually only one would come. These eggs are retrieved with a skill so delicate it is like picking dewdrops without shaking the leaf. Then comes the male seed, the sperm, washed, prepared, selected, the strongest, the swiftest, and in a dish, in a controlled environment that mimics the very fallopian tube, the two are introduced. Fertilization happens. A cell divides. Two. Four. Eight. Life begins, not by accident, but by intention, under the watchful eyes of embryologists, whose hands are as steady as priests at an altar. This embryo, this speck of potential that already carries the nose of the father and the smile of the mother, is then transferred back into the womb that has been prepared like a garden, waiting for a seed. And there, if God wills, if the body accepts, it implants. It grows. It becomes a heartbeat on a scan. A kick. A cry. A naming ceremony. This is art. This is what happens daily at Virtue under this visionary expert.
Why does it matter that this art is happening in Ekpoma and not only in Lagos or Abuja or London? Because pain does not have a passport. The woman in Irrua who has waited eight years does not have the money to fly to America. The teacher in Uromi who has lost three pregnancies does not want to travel for twelve hours to sit in traffic in Lagos for a scan. The young couple in Auchi who were told “your sperm is low” thought their village had cursed them, until someone whispered, “Go to Virtue in Ekpoma, go and see Dr. Olugbenga.” The doctor who believed that world-class fertility care should not be a privilege of the city alone. He brought the mountain to Mohammed. He domesticated a global technology and gave it an Esan accent. He said to our people: You do not need to leave your land to find fruitfulness. Fruitfulness can find you here. And that is the first success. Accessibility. Dignity. Proximity. Before now, IVF was seen as something for the rich, for the big men and big women in Ikoyi. Virtue under Dr. Olugbenga shattered that glass ceiling. It made world-standard fertility care available, affordable, understandable, and culturally respectful to the average Edo, Delta, Kogi, Ondo and Anambra couple. The nurses speak your language. The doctor knows why your mother-in-law is worried. The counseling is not cold and clinical; it is warm, it is prayerful, it is African.
The success of the art of IVF anywhere in the world rests on four pillars, and Virtue Specialist Hospital under the leadership of Dr. Olugbenga OE has built its house on all four, and the first pillar is the human expertise. Medicine is not machine; medicine is man. At Virtue, there are not just doctors, there are devotees. Dr. Olugbenga, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and Fertility Specialist with Fellowships of the West African College of Surgeons, the Fellowship of the Medical College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Fellowship of the International College of Surgeons, and a Post-Fellowship in Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technology, has chosen to specialise in the most emotionally demanding field of all, reproductive medicine. Alongside him are embryologists who sit for hours over microscopes, refusing to blink, because one shake can ruin one family’s destiny. There are nurses who have learned to be part nurse, part counselor, part sister. When a woman’s cycle fails, they do not just say sorry, it failed. They hold her hand. They say we will try again, with God. This dedication is the invisible success. Because IVF is not one hundred percent. No hospital in the world has one hundred percent. There are cycles that fail. But the way Virtue under Dr. Olugbenga handles failure is part of its success. It does not abandon. It reviews, it re-strategizes, it encourages.
The second pillar is the laboratory, the Holy of Holies. If the doctor is the prophet, the lab is the temple. The IVF lab at Virtue, envisioned and equipped to standard by Dr. Olugbenga as MD/CEO, is built to standards. Temperature controlled to the decimal. Air filtered. Culture media imported and preserved. Incubators that mimic the womb to the exact degree. Cryopreservation tanks that hold frozen embryos like precious jewels in a vault at minus one hundred and ninety six degrees, waiting for their time. It is in this lab that the real art happens. ICSI, where one single sperm is injected into one single egg, giving hope to men who were once told you can never father a child. Blastocyst culture, where embryos are grown to Day Five, selecting only the strongest for transfer. Freezing of eggs for young women who are not yet ready for marriage but want to preserve their fertility. The freezing of sperm for men undergoing treatment. This lab does not shout. It is quiet. But its silence has produced cries, the cries of newborns, to the glory of God and the credit of the expertise that Dr. Olugbenga has assembled.
The third pillar is ethical practice and honest counseling. This is where Virtue under Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel stands tall. In an age where some overpromise and under-deliver, where couples are lured with one hundred percent guarantee and then fleeced, Virtue practices what medicine calls ethical reproductive medicine. Dr. Olugbenga, as a Consultant and a man of faith and virtue, does not promise what God alone can promise. He does not do practices that offend our faith. As a hospital rooted in a community that respects life, their practice of IVF respects life from the embryonic stage. They counsel couples honestly: With your age, with your AMH, your chance per cycle is like this. Your options are like this. Your cost is like this. No hidden fees. No surprise after embryo transfer. That honesty is success. Because a couple that is counseled truthfully by his team will trust the process, whether it succeeds in the first cycle or the third.
And the fourth pillar, which is the greatest of all, is the testimony of the people. Go to Ekpoma. Sit in front of Virtue Specialist Hospital. If you stay there long enough, you will see them arrive. A couple stepping out, the woman hiding her face in a wrapper, but not because of shame, because inside that wrapper is a baby that was once just an embryo in a dish nurtured under the care of Virtue Specialist Hospital fertility team, you will hear names whispered in thanksgiving: Na Virtue we go. Na Dr. Olugbenga God use for us. After twelve years, na Virtue God take answer us. A market woman who was called barren for ten years now sells groundnut with a child strapped to her back, and when you ask her, she says, Na Virtue. A Reverend Father who prayed for his parishioners for years now baptizes babies that were conceived through the art practiced at Virtue, and he does so with holy water and with holy joy, because he knows science is also a gift of God, and he knows the vessel God used is Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel. A young man who was told his sperm count was zero, who thought his name would end with him, now bears his father on his shoulders, because ICSI at Virtue found the few healthy soldiers in his sample. These are not numbers on a chart. These are villages that now have children. These are marriages that were on the brink of divorce that are now renewed. These are mothers who can now attend August Meeting and carry a baby, not just a handbag. That is the success that cannot be measured in percentages.
For our drama, THE MODERN MOTHERS, this story is important. Our modern mother of today is stressed. She has fibroid. She has PCOS. She has married late because she was in school. She has had infections that blocked her tubes. She has a husband whose sperm is low because of heat, stress, infection, or lifestyle. In our mothers’ time, these problems were hidden and called witchcraft. Today, they have a name and they have a solution. Virtue Specialist Hospital, Ekpoma, under Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel, tells the modern mother: Your delay is not denial. Your biology is not your destiny. There is art. There is help. Come and be checked. Come early. It also speaks to the modern father. Because at Virtue, Dr. Olugbenga does not put all the blame on the woman. They teach that infertility is of the couple. The man is checked. The man is treated. The man is counseled to stop alcohol, to stop putting his laptop on his lap for hours, to treat infections early. This shared responsibility, taught by fertility specialists, is itself success, because it heals marriages.
The art of IVF at Virtue is not yet finished. No art is ever finished. Under the continued leadership of Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel, MBBS, FWACS, FMCOG, FICS, PF-IART, they are growing. They are training more staff. They are acquiring more advanced equipment like time-lapse embryo imaging. They are building collaborations with bigger centers, so that cases that need more advanced genetic screening can be handled. But even as they grow, they keep their virtue, which is their name, a virtue that is personified in its MD/CEO. Virtue meaning moral excellence, goodness, integrity. They have refused to become a commercial factory for babies. They remain a hospital where each couple is a story, not a statistic. And so, when we speak of the success of the art of IVF at Virtue Specialist Hospital, Ekpoma, we are not just speaking of positive pregnancy tests. We are speaking of the restoration of dignity to Esan women through the hands of Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel. We are speaking of the end of stigma. We are speaking of the preservation of marriages. We are speaking of a hospital that dared, under Dr. Emmanuel, to bring a London-standard lab to an Ekpoma street and said, Let there be life. And there was life. And there is life. And there will be more life.
For every woman who is reading this with tears in her eyes, for every man who has been hiding his pain behind silence, know this: At Virtue Specialist Hospital, Ekpoma, led by Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and Fertility Specialist, science has hands, and those hands are skilled. Faith has a laboratory, and that laboratory is working. And hope, which is the greatest art of all, has an address. That address is Virtue, and that hope has a name, Dr. Olugbenga Olorungbogo Emmanuel. May every waiting womb be visited. May every silent home hear the cry of a child(Amen).
