Willem Ombelet

Willem Ombelet (born Leuven, December 4, 1954) is a Belgian gynecologist/infertility specialist. From 1990 until 2019, he was the head of the fertility center of the Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg hospital in Genk, Belgium. Ombelet is a pioneer of intrauterine insemination (IUI). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the magazine The Walking Egg and the open-access journal Views & Vision in ObGyn.” Ombelet co-founded The Walking Egg, a non-profit organization that tackles global infertility in a holistic, multidisciplinary, and integral way. It aims to make infertility diagnosis and treatment in developing countries more affordable and accessible. Ombelet taught reproductive medicine at University of Limburg (now University of Hasselt) and is a consultant (Reproductive Medicine) at Hasselt University and at Ghent University.
==Science and art==
Ombelet is the founder of the Genk Institute for Fertility Technology (GIFT) and was chairman of seven international "Andrology in the Nineties" meetings.
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In 2010, they founded the Walking Egg, a non-profit organization.
In 2015, Ombelet became an ambassador of LABIOMISTA,https://www.labiomista.be/en/lock/willem-ombelet Koen Vanmechelens culture park and evolving work of art about the mix of life in Genk.
==Scientific work and activities==
From 2001 until 2004, Ombelet was the President of the Flemish Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology (VVOG). He has authored more than 170 internationally peer-reviewed articles and has received two international awards. One was "The Best of What's New Award" from Popular Science Magazine (2014). In addition, Ombelet is the (co-)editor of 18 books. 
==IUI pioneer==
Since 1986, Ombelet has promoted intrauterine insemination (IUI) as a cost-effective and safe method of assisted reproduction in selected cases of moderate male and unexplained infertility. He wrote many scientific papers on this subject; the most important one was published in 2018 in, the leading scientific Journal in human reproduction. Furthermore, with Ben Cohlen (Zwolle, the Netherlands), head of the Fertility Center Isala, he edited a book on IUIhttps://www.routledge.com/Intra-Uterine-Insemination-Evidence-Based-Guidelines-for-Daily-Practice/Cohlen-Ombelet/p/book/9781841849881 and worked on the WHO guidelines for IUI. 
==Safety in assisted reproduction pioneer==
Ombelet published several studies on maternal and perinatal outcomes after using assisted reproductive techniques. He stressed the importance of preventing complications due to aggressive ovarian stimulation protocols such as Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a life-threatening disease. He also promoted using single embryo transfer to prevent multiple pregnancies, the leading cause of maternal and perinatal complications. 
==ESHRE==
From 2006 until 2015, Ombelet was the ESHRE Special Task Force coordinator on ‘Developing countries and infertility’. This Task Force aimed to make infertility diagnosis and treatment in resource-poor countries more affordable and accessible. The first project was an expert meeting on the topic of "Developing countries and infertilityhttps://academic.oup.com/eshremonographs/article/2008/1/1/620131 in Arusha, Tanzania, from 15 to 17 December 2007.
==The Walking Egg project==
Together with ESHRE and WHO (World Health Organization), the Walking Egg Project aims to strengthen infertility care through innovation and research, advocacy and networking, training and capacity building, and service delivery. Ombelet was involved in many scientific papers on this subject. 
==Simplified IVF culture method (The Walking Egg IVF system)==
In 2009, a new innovative simplified IVF system was developed, tested, and validated for human application by Professor Jonathan Van Blerkom from the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
Using this "closed system," there is no need for an expensive IVF laboratory with CO2 incubators, medical gas supply, and air purification systems. A prospective study comparing this simplified low-cost IVF method with ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) showed identical results of fertilization and pregnancy rate between both methods (link paper 1 RBM Online).https://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(22)00279-6/fulltext Up to 2022, more than 250 babies were born after this simplified method. The perinatal outcome of these babies was very reassuring, with very low prematurity and low birth weight rates compared to babies born after classical IVF and ICSI https://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(22)00280-2/fulltext
==Ghana (Accra) Walking Egg Project==
In 2015, a collaborative project was started in Ghana with the support of the Pentecost Church and in close partnership with Nana Yaw Osei, Fertility Counselor & CEO of the Association of Childless Couples Of Ghana (ACCOG Ghana]). Kwadwo, the first African TWE baby, was born in Accra on August 7, 2017. 
==Topdokters==
On January 27, 2021, Ombelets work in the Global South featured on Topdokters,https://www.tvgemist.be/topdokters/s7-aflevering-1-154158 a program on Play 4, a Belgian-Flemish commercial television channel. It was the first episode of the 7th season and attracted 683,677 viewers, which made it into the best-watched program of all nine seasons. 
Category:1954 births
Category:People from Bierbeek
Category:Belgian people
Category:Ghent University alumni
Category:Gynaecologists