Antega South Africa · Learning Videos
Dr Razina Patel walks through elective (social) egg freezing step by step, from ovarian stimulation and monitoring to egg collection, vitrification and storage.
Egg freezing means going through the first half of an IVF cycle — daily injections to stimulate the ovaries, scans and blood tests to monitor the response, and a short procedure under sedation to collect the eggs — and then freezing the mature eggs by vitrification rather than fertilising them. When you want to use them, the eggs are thawed, fertilised with sperm (usually by ICSI), grown in the laboratory and transferred as an embryo. Freezing eggs does not guarantee a baby later. How likely a stored batch is to lead to a birth depends on your age when the eggs were frozen, how many mature eggs were collected, how many survive thawing, how many fertilise, how the embryos develop and what happens at transfer. Younger age at freezing and a larger number of mature eggs both improve the odds, but no number of eggs makes it certain. Ask your clinic for their own thaw and live-birth figures, and for their storage costs and consent terms before you start.
Recorded in 2022. The stages of treatment described are unchanged, but storage fees, consent paperwork and any clinic-quoted success figures should be confirmed with your own South African clinic.
Use these guides for general background, and check the South Africa organisations named on this page for local detail.
Dr Victor Hulme explains low and premature ovarian reserve — what the tests measure, what they do not tell you, and what the options are.
The Africa session of the Oncofertility Around the Globe virtual conference, with speakers including Dr Chris Venter (South Africa), Nonso Daniels (Nigeria) and Mohamed Khrouf (Tunisia), on preserving fertility before cancer treatment across African settings.
This video was produced by Fertility Show Africa Expert Talks (programme curated with IFAASA and SASREG) and is shared for education only. It is not medical advice and does not replace guidance from your own doctor or fertility clinic. Naming an organisation does not imply a partnership with Antega.
