But that doesn’t mean people in Sub-Saharan Africa don’t need IVF. Research by the organization suggests that infertility rates are similar in high-income and low-income countries. Willem Ombelet, a retired gynecologist, first noticed these disparities back in the 1980s, while he was working at an IVF lab in Pretoria. Ombelet, Van Blerkom, and their colleagues found that this approach appeared to work as well as regular IVF. The first babies conceived with the simplified IVF process were born later that year.