UAE: Seen this purple bus? Company offers free fertility testing to women

The two-week campaign will see the company’s fertility bus make its way around locations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi

Nasreen Abdulla

Published: Tue 17 Sep 2024, 4:59 PM

Last updated: Tue 17 Sep 2024, 10:32 PM

A unique campaign by a local company to help women take charge of their fertility has been met with a resounding response. On the first day, FemTech company Ovasave had more than 300 women turning up at its purple-coloured 'fertility bus' that was stationed at the Central Park towers in Dubai.

“We ran out of test kits and had to ask women to come back on another day,” said Torkia Mahloul, co-founder of Ovasave. “It shows how women want to know more about their fertility.”

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The two-week campaign will see the company’s fertility bus make its way around locations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, handing out free 5-minute Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) test kits worth Dh350. This will provide women with information about their egg reserve, offering them insights to safeguard their fertility's future.

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Among other locations, it will be stationed at Etihad HQ, Abu Dhabi Global Market, Alserkal Avenue and Dubai Media City.

One of the women who turned up at the campaign’s location in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) on Tuesday, said that she had been thinking about fertility testing ever since she heard about it. “One of my friends froze her eggs last year,” she said, declining to give her name. “We are both in our late 30s and have a very busy career. I still have not found a partner but I would like to have children at some point in the future. So ever since she did it, I have been thinking about getting tested but I just kept putting it off.”

Torkia said that one of the company’s objectives was to take away this pain point. “No one really thinks about getting their fertility tested,” she said. “Also, it is an expensive procedure that is not covered by insurance. A fertility testing and doctor consultation could together cost up to Dh1,000. We wanted to make a product that was easily accessible to women and could be done from their homes at a nominal cost of just Dh350, which also includes a teleconsultation with a doctor about what the results mean.”

Personal experience

For Torkia, the idea of the company came from her own experience of getting tested for fertility at the age of 34. “I was shocked when I was told that if I did not plan to have a child in the next year, it would be best to freeze my eggs,” she said. “It was the first time that I was getting that information. I used to see women having kids in their 40s and thought it just happened.”

She went through multiple rounds of egg freezing and said her biggest regret was that she didn’t do it when she was younger. “Had I done it in my late 20s, maybe I would have needed only one round of freezing,” she said. “When I spoke to women around me, I realised I was not the only one who didn’t know this. There was a gap in the education and awareness about fertility. There is also a certain stigma around it that no one really talks about it.”

It is all these factors that prompted Torkia to team up with fertility expert Majd Abu Zant to set up Ovasave. “I come from a tech background and Majd has over twenty years of expertise in women’s fertility,” she said. “That is how we launched our service.”

Torkia and Majd

Majd explained how with time, women's eggs reduce in number, as well as quality. “Women are born with a million eggs but by the age of 37, only 25,000 of those are remaining. Even the remaining ones are not of the best quality. So women should be mindful of the age of their eggs and start taking charge of their fertility early.”

Torkia said their aim with the campaign — which is sponsored by Merck and Dubai Investments — is to take away the stigma surrounding topics of women’s health. After the tests, the company then puts the women in touch with fertility doctors and other experts to take forward their journey.

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