By Ramón Alfonso López Álvarez, co-founder and general manager of Fertilam Fertility Center, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and an ambassador of the IFFS’s More Joy campaign
I founded #YoCuidoMiFertilidad, which can be translated as “I take care of my fertility,” on a simple conviction: what isn’t talked about isn’t cared for. This year, that conviction turned into a room of more than 200 people, including patients, health professionals, institutions and sector allies, gathered for our second national #YoCuidoMiFertilidad meeting, a day of education, testimony and open discussion about reproductive health.
The programme included more than 30 speakers, covering reproductive potential, endometriosis, myths and realities, male reproductive health, fertility preservation and nutrition, as well as an international panel on wellbeing and stress, and a conversation about faith and spirituality – a dimension deeply present in Dominican culture yet rarely integrated into the clinical conversation.
I closed the day by launching the Fertilam Fertility Awards, recognising people, organisations and brands helping to improve reproductive health in the country. Among our first honourees was Banco LAFISE, the first Dominican bank to finance assisted reproduction treatments, proof that improving access has to extend beyond the clinic.
Looking back, the moment that stayed with me most wasn’t anything on the programme. It was watching couples stand up and share their own experiences and the decisions they’d faced, in front of a room of strangers. Their openness told me something I’ve believed for a while: the silence around fertility is finally starting to lift.
This conversation has been decades in the making. My grandfather, Dr Julio Álvarez Acosta, was one of the pioneers of in vitro fertilisation in the Dominican Republic, founding the country’s first IVF laboratory, the Unidad de Esterilidad y Fertilización In Vitro, at a time when infertility was lived in solitude and almost in secret. Fertilam carries that family story forward. He built the clinical foundation; my contribution has been communication, bringing the subject into the open and making it accessible to everyone.
Access to reproductive medicine across Latin America and the Caribbean depends on more than the technology available; it also comes down to people feeling they can get informed, talk about the subject and seek help in time. This is what draws me to the IFFS’s More Joy campaign, which is working toward the same goal globally: making fertility care more affordable and accessible. As one of its ambassadors, my role is to bring that message to the Dominican Republic and the wider region, using what we’ve built with #YoCuidoMiFertilidad as a working example of what open conversation can achieve. My hope is for this gathering to keep growing as an annual platform for education and visibility, and for what we’ve learned here to be useful to colleagues elsewhere in the region facing the same silence.
None of this happens alone. The Dominican Association of Reproductive Medicine (ADOMERE) supported this year’s gathering, alongside the institutions and allies who show up each year to keep the conversation going.
The Dominican Republic has started talking about fertility instead of avoiding it. My job now is to make sure that conversation doesn’t go quiet again.