Embryologist Clotelle Frederick, Her role in test tube babies

One of the biggest rewards for embryologist Clotelle Frederick is knowing that her work might help an infertile couple to conceive.

A trained biochemist who got into the embryology field in the last five years, Clotelle works with her husband, Dr Joseph Frederick, at the Advanced Training and Research in Fertility Management Unit at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

To her and another embryologist in the laboratory falls the task of preparing and grading the eggs taken from a potential mother to see whether they are suitable for fertilisation.

“First, the fluid from the follicle is aspirated, and we look to see if it has eggs. We then remove any eggs we identify and put them in a special solution for storage,” she explained to All Woman.

“Before we store them, however, we grade them as mature, immature and post mature eggs. The mature eggs are the ideal ones for fertilisation,” she continued.

Another crucial job that she performs is that of identifying pure sperm cells to fertilise the eggs.

“The sperm requires special preparation — we have to get rid of the debris in the seminal fluid so that we can have the pure sperm to use,” she stated.

Her interest in the field of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), she said, was sparked by that of her husband, who has always had an interest in fertility issues.

“In 1995 we went to Puerto Rico to see their IVF unit and three months later we went to Birmingham to do an IVF course,” the pleasant Barbadian-born Jamaican resident relates. She happily recounts the effort she made in getting the equipment to set up the lab and its facilities upon their return to Jamaica.

It took her a year to get everything set up, but it gave her immense satisfaction when they finished the first batch of patients earlier this year.

“We are taking patients in batches because we do not have the facilities right now to handle everybody continuously. The demand for our service is tremendous though and we already have a long list of couples for our second batch,” she said.

While her husband works mostly with the patients, she also has the crucial job of preparing the egg and sperm for fertilisation, putting egg and sperm together in the lab, storing them for 18 hours and watching for signs of fertilisation.

“The hours can be long at times but it is very interesting. I remember once when we took some eggs from a woman and were waiting on her husband to produce the sperm and this did not happen.”

“It was nerve wracking because the sperm must be ready right after you take the eggs out so that you can put them together for fertilisation. Once they are fertilised, you insert them into the woman on day three,” she explained.

In this case a testicular biopsy had to be done on the husband where tubules containing sperm were removed from the testicles and searched until the healthy sperms could be removed.

“It is a two-day process so normally the couple comes in and we get the sperm and the egg. Then the woman comes back two days after for it to be implanted. If we had not got the sperm that same day from this couple I don’t know what we would have done,” she said.

Clotelle has a Bachelor of Science Degree in biochemistry from McGill University in Canada and a Master of Science in the same area from Howard University in the United States. She has three children with her husband of 26 years . They are Kwame, Christopher, and Sharifa who is studying medicine.

Clotelle told All Woman that she has had no problems working closely with her husband as they had different roles.

“As a clinical doctor his role in the process is different from mine. I am mostly in the lab and he is with the patients so we don’t see so much of each other,” she explains.

The biggest problems she has had so far, she recounts, are bringing in the culture and the required medical supplies into the island, and enlisting persons in Jamaica to service some of the high-tech equipment in the lab. For the future she hopes that in vitro fertilisation unit will grow to be an ongoing part of the fertility unit and not just operate under a batch system as it does now.