Helping infertile couples conceive, Dr. Madhu Singh is a ‘Special Person’

Aug 11, 2019 News, Special Person

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“I was always interested in infertility from the time I was studying Obstetrics and Gynaecology, because my professor was an infertility specialist, so I was exposed to a lot of infertility treatment and I realised that the most difficult thing in Obstetrics and Gynaecology is infertility; it really is the last frontier in Gynaecology.”

By Sharmain Grainger

Many women have an innate desire to become a mother. While for some that goal easily comes to fruition, for others it could be a real struggle even to the point of depression. But all hope is not lost, at least for some women. This is in light of the advancement of medical science in the form of in vitro fertilisation, which is simply referred to as IVF.

Essentially, IVF is the process of fertilising human sperm and egg in a lab and the resulting embryo is then transferred into a woman’s uterus where it grows to full term. These babies are casually referred to as “test tube babies”.
This, to many women, who have conceived this way, is nothing short of miraculous. But back in the day this was only offered in the developed countries. This meant that many Guyanese women suffering from infertility and lacking the wherewithal to access this service overseas, merely suffered in silence.
Well at least up until 2014, when the answer to their prayers came through Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital. The privately-operated hospital made the bold step to introduce IVF.
At the helm of the hospital, and this astounding move, was and still is Dr. Madhu Pandey Singh. Dr. Singh is in fact the country’s lone infertility specialist, and she certainly has a passion for making mothers out of infertile women.
Her track record in this regard is on par with what obtains in the Region, and Dr. Singh couldn’t be more proud of her achievement, so much so that she aims to have her hospital become the leading IVF facility in the Caribbean. But she might be nearing this goal, if it has not yet been achieved. This is due to the fact that the local IVF facility is said to offer the lowest prices when compared Caribbean-wide, and many have been flocking to access the service.
“Our price makes us stand out from the other Centres in the Caribbean; our prices are much lower,” said Dr. Singh, as she eagerly added, “Basically we serve the Guyanese population, but we also serve Surinamese, some from the

Islands, who are mostly Guyanese living there, and we also have a few patients who come from the US.”
Indeed, the availability of IVF in Guyana has helped to revolutionise how people view health care in Guyana, and for this, Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital can be credited with taking the lead.
FROM INDIA TO GUYANA
But although many people are familiar with the ever-growing Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital nestled on East Street in the capital city, some do not know Dr. Singh, who has been doctor to many women through her Obstetrics and Gynaecology practice for many years.
Born and raised in India to parents who were both doctors – Dr. Satish Pandey who was a Professor of General Surgery and Tripti Pandey, a Gynaecologist [both deceased] – it wasn’t unexpected that she too would have ventured into the medical field.
Dr. Singh completed her first degree at the Government Medical College in Jabalpur and then went on to do a diploma in pathology. It was while at university completing her early medical studies, that she met a young, handsome Guyanese man who was pursuing medical studies at the same institution. His name was Balwant Singh Jr., son of a thriving medical practitioner, Dr. Balwant Singh, in Guyana,.

The two decided they would tie the knot and travel to Guyana to build a family of their own. This saw the young Madhu Pandey saying farewell to her family and homeland, and venturing to a land she knew very little of. Thirty-three years later they have three adult children all in the medical profession – a daughter, Shefali, a dentist in London; Rahul, a medical doctor currently studying for his United States Medical Licensing Examination, and Abhishek, who is studying medicine in Grenada.
Aside from her beautiful family, being able to help evolve a medical institution which was formerly her father-in-law’s, has been one of Dr. Singh’s greatest achievements.

But it didn’t happen overnight.
A TEACHING PROCESS
Dr. Singh remembered that during her early days in Guyana she worked diligently as a pathologist, but never really found much joy in doing that. “I generally was not happy doing that, because I like to interact with people, but in pathology you really don’t see a lot of people…you just see specimens like the blood and the urine,” Dr. Singh recounted.
She remembered sharing this concern with her father, who didn’t hesitate to encourage her to undertake studies in Gynaecology, which he believed would have been more fulfilling. Taking her father’s advice, she journeyed back to India and it certainly was a challenge, as she did so with her youngest child, who was just a baby at the time.

But she was determined to do her best and at the culmination of the course at the Kasturba Medical College in 1998, this was especially clear when Dr. Singh was awarded the Dr. P. Amini Memorial Award for being the Best Outgoing Student in Obstetrics and Gynaecology [OB-GYN].
Eager to get her OB-GYN practice going, Dr. Singh returned to Guyana and was able to secure a position as a Consultant at the Georgetown Public Hospital. She remained there for about five years and she recalled learning a great deal too.
“I really enjoyed working there. I gained a lot of very valuable experience…I don’t think I couldn’t have gotten that kind of experience, or that volume of work, anywhere else in the world,” said Dr. Singh, as she reflected on her years at the public hospital.
It was there, she shared, that she gained a better understanding of some peculiarities specific to Guyanese patients. It was there she learnt things like “what women mean by saying they’re seeing their health; I got to learn a lot and it was a great experience…I worked with some really good junior doctors and we had a very good gynaecologist from Africa who was a VSO at that time, who I learnt a lot from in practical terms.”
But after the passing of her father-in-law, Dr. Singh opted to redirect her focus to advancing the operation of the private hospital with her husband. As they initiated a phased upgrade of the Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital, she resigned from the public hospital. She then started to practice at the East Street hospital and at a few other private facilities.
Before long, Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital was commandeering all of her practicing attention.
NEW SERVICES
As the evolution of the hospital took shape, a number of new services, some of which had never before been offered in Guyana at a private facility, were being introduced. Among them were the introduction of cardiac surgery, a 16 slice CT Scan, a 1.5 Tesla MRI Scanner, and even endoscopic urology with Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy [PCNL] became a staple. In fact, Dr. Singh said that Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital is still the only facility in the country offering PCNL, which is a minimal access surgery for kidney stones patients.
She went on to boast of the fact that “We are the only private hospital in Guyana that has a full-time nephrologist, and so our dialysis patients are well taken care of”.
Dr. Singh is convinced too that the Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital was the first full-fledged hospital to offer dialysis as a regular feature to renal failure patients.
In addition to a thriving paediatric practice, the hospital caters to orthopaedics and dermatology needs of patients, complete with several laser procedures that are FDA-approved. The hospital is known to offer a variety of packages to patients, especially expectant mothers.
To further catapult its operation, Dr. Singh said that the hospital has the first clinical laboratory to receive ISO 15189 accreditation, even as efforts are being made to attain ISO 9001 certification for the entire hospital. Once this is achieved, it will mean that the hospital has met all international standards for a quality management system, and thereby offers products and services that meet customers and regulatory requirements.
SPECIALISED SKILLS
But even in the face of helping to meet a wide and growing variety of patients’ needs, nothing has brought Dr. Singh more joy than addressing the infertility dilemma faced by many couples.
“I was always interested in infertility from the time I was studying Obstetrics and Gynaecology, because my professor was an infertility specialist. So I was exposed to a lot of infertility treatment, and I realised that the most difficult thing in Obstetrics and Gynaecology is infertility; it really is the last frontier in Gynaecology,” she shared.
However, becoming an infertility specialist requires dedicating a great deal of time and energy to learning.
“It is not something that happens like that, you have to work on it. You have to acquire a lot of other skills besides what you learn from being an Obstetrician/Gynaecologist. You have to learn specific treatment, you have to learn how to do ultrasound, you have to learn how to aspirate the eggs and how to transfer embryos. These are all very specialised skills…it is a most difficult thing that Gynaecologists do to help infertile patients conceive,” she underscored.
Even as she stressed the importance of raising more awareness about IVF, Dr. Singh made it clear that it isn’t all couples that can be helped. She explained that the more advanced women become in age, their fertility begins to decline. She disclosed that there is a steep slope for some women by the time they reach the age of 40, since their eggs may no longer be viable enough to aid conception.
To determine infertility, Dr. Singh said that it must first be established, based on the World Health Organisation definition, that a couple has been having unprotected sexual intercourse for at least one year without conceiving. She however noted that some physicians would extend this non-conceiving period to two years, once evaluations of both partners have been completed and neither have any detectable infertility issues. “We have to evaluate both partners to be fair…because of all infertility, 50 percent can be attributed to male infertility, so men shouldn’t think it is always the women,” Dr. Singh added.
She went on to share that even in desperation to help some people, IVF may not always be the answer. “IVF is not a magic bullet; you can’t help everybody. It can’t help people who have already lost all of their eggs; it can’t help men who have no sperms. But certainly the most success IVF has had throughout the world has been on men with low sperm count and women with tubal factor, women who have blocked tubes, because for IVF you don’t need the tube, we do the fertilisation in the lab,” Dr. Singh explained.
MORE EFFICIENT
As Dr. Singh eyes expanding the IVF service, she recently completed a Masters in Clinical Embryology at Leeds University. Added to this, recent moves were made to appoint a full-time embryologist. Ganesh Persaud, who hails from Essequibo, was employed as the hospital’s Head of Laboratory for a number of years, and was granted a scholarship to study in the field of embryology in India. He recently returned with specialist skills in Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection [ICSI] and, according to Dr. Singh, this will help the hospital to be even more efficient in its IVF department.
“With Ganesh on board, I can schedule my patients according to their convenience, rather than having to batch them,” said Dr. Singh as she recalled how prior to this, the hospital had to work around the schedules of visiting embryologists.
Dr. Singh anticipates being able to make even more couples happy in the future by helping them to conceive. She remembers fondly her first IVF baby which signalled the start of one of the most stupendous step the hospital has taken as part of its evolution. Also etched in her memory was her first IVF twin birth which she recalled was a real challenge to ensure that they came to full-term. She was elated to share that all of the efforts put into helping them come alive is still evident, especially when she gets a chance to see the happy and healthy little human beings they have grown into.
But even as she basks in the glory of IVF, Dr. Singh still takes special pride in the delivery of babies she didn’t help to conceive. “I am really proud of how my obstetric practice has developed. Even though I have a passion for infertility, I like to see the end results in obstetrics, of not having done anything but deliver the babies,” said a smiling Dr. Singh.
For helping to make infertile couples conceive, and the so many other services she has helped to introduce to the Guyanese public through the Dr. Balwant Singh’s Hospital, today, we at Kaieteur News bestow Dr. Madhu Singh with our title of ‘Special Person’.

 

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