By Our Reporter
Merck, a leading science and technology company has appointed Uganda’s Minister of State for Health Sarah Opendi as the ambassador of the ‘Merck More Than a Mother’ campaign. This is in recognition of her support and efforts to reduce the stigma of infertility and raise awareness about the condition in the country.
The company also awarded Berna Amullen, a Ugandan woman, who openly shared her story of stigmatization and suffering for being infertile. The award was in recognition of her courage in creating awareness and sharing her devastating experience so that no other woman would suffer the same.
The ‘Merck More than a Mother’ campaign aims at improving access to quality and safe fertility care across the African continent. Merck is partnering with governments, parliamentarians, academia, medical community, women leaders and media to empower infertile women through improving access to information and healthcare and change of mind set.
“This campaign is a pan-African initiative aimed at building fertility capacity, raising awareness about infertility prevention and male infertility. It also opens a dialogue to define interventions to reduce the stigma and social suffering of infertile women in Africa which includes discrimination and physical and psychological violence. Countless women in Africa face fear, abuse and discrimination every day simply because they are infertile. We want to reduce the harsh social suffering of infertile women in Uganda and on the continent,” said Belén Garijo, Member of the Executive Board of Merck and CEO Healthcare.
Hon. Opendi emphasized, “We are happy to partner with reputable and innovative companies such as Merck. We believe that this campaign addresses a very sensitive topic for the first time in Africa. We all know it is there but no one wants to talk about it. This initiative will help to empower infertile women by improving access to information and change in the culture and mind set. Most Sub-Sahara African countries don’t have trained embryologists hence providing training to our embryologists will contribute significantly to improve the quality and accessibility to fertility care to couples in Uganda and Africa so that they can start their families.”
Rasha Kelej the Chief Social Officer Merck Healthcare said, “We will provide training for African embryologists in Indonesia starting with candidates from Uganda and Kenya and will scale up to the rest of the continent. We will also provide education for healthcare providers which will improve basic fertility management and improve awareness about prevention and male infertility which is needed in Africa.”
