Fertility treatment at emBIO Medical Centre in Greece – A 5-star experience!

Treatment: In-vitro fertilisation (IVF)
Provider: emBIO Medical Centre
Date: Nov 2018

After two challenging and unsuccessful visits to fertility clinics abroad, 45-year-old Ninke from the Netherlands is delighted to share her experience of treatment with Dr Thanos Paraschos at emBIO Medical Centre in Athens in the hope that it might help other infertile couples.

"My name is Ninke, I am 45 years old and I live in the Netherlands. I decided to publicly express my gratitude to Dr Paraschos and the emBIO Medical Centre team from Greece because, for me, they deserve a public acknowledgement and at the same time this might help other infertile couples like us.

We had been trying to conceive for around 4.5 years without success. Then, we initially visited a Mediterranean (non-EU) country for our IVF treatment in 2015. Despite the clinic’s promises and the really low cost, they didn’t manage to help us and both cycles failed. In 2016, we decided to travel to another country, in the EU this time, popular also for its Infertility treatments, from where we left even more than disappointed.

And while we were about to give up as we were financially and physically exhausted, I came across an article on emBIO Medical Centre in Greece and its high-performance rates. I called them the same day and I was really impressed by their immediate response, their kindness and the fact that Dr Paraschos himself spent some time with us over Skype. Dr Paraschos is a really kind person with a very deep understanding and empathy for couples like us. Good communication also surprised us, as in both the other countries we were struggling to communicate with the clinic team. Our treatments succeeded this time and 2 months ago we became the parents of twins. Our excitement is profound and in order to help other couples, I will try to outline why this clinic in Greece was the best choice for us by rating all points that are important for foreign couples like us.

Destination: Frequent low-cost flights to Athens combined with the city’s modern infrastructure made it easy for us to travel there. The use of public transportation to anywhere we wanted to go (we are school teachers with limited finances) was trouble-free, buying food was straightforward and simple and our feeling of safety was not in the least challenged nor doubted! As Greece is a popular tourist destination, Greeks of recent generations have heavily invested in tourism and therefore, foreign languages are widely spoken, especially English. This facilitated communicate not only with everyone from the clinic team, but with the waiters at coffee shops and restaurants, the apartment owner, and the people out on the streets as well. This might not be an issue for some, but for us, who had had these two former challenging experiences with the other two counties already, in Greece everything was easy going and carefree for a foreigner.

Clinic: emBIO Medical Centre is a modern clinic that applies the full range of fertility treatments. From day one, we had our coordinator by our side taking us through the steps without us having to think or worry about anything. They made it really easy for us by making us feel comfortable and not like just another revenue for their clinic. Everybody really seemed to care about how we felt.

Doctor: I don’t really have the words to describe Dr Thanos Paraschos both as a doctor and as a person.  From our first call, he made us feel confident that we were in 'good hands'.  He even suggested that we take a line of tests in our country (paid by our health system) in order to save test costs in Greece. Nobody ever did that before for us.  When we met him at emBIO, he presented us with all our options and recommended the most effective IVF treatment for us. His skills, his extensive experience, combined with the state of the art laboratory, brought the desired results this time. A knowledgeable doctor like him is extremely important for the treatment’s success.

Communication: As mentioned before, everything was easy for us at emBIO Medical Centre and in Athens in general. I still remember our previous unfortunate attempts made in the other destinations where we could hardly understand what they were saying or writing to us. Transparency with billing and payment was also important to us and everything was explained crystal clear from the very beginning without any 'small print'.

Quality: Our constant impression throughout our entire experience with emBIO Medical Centre was that everything was under control. No mistakes, no delays, no false promises or pretences but highly accredited, carefully selected personnel that knew their job very well. I would recommend them to everyone.

Cost: the treatment cost in most Greek clinics is lower than anywhere in the EU, but following our previous unsuccessful treatments and experience in other countries, this was not what really counted for us. What counted for us and for other infertile couples is to conceive through the best possible experience and with the least discomfort.

I believe that our experience gave us an excellent knowledge of fertility travelling and I am sure that the above-mentioned points are important to all of us.

Once again I would like to show my gratitude to Dr Thanos Paraschos and the emBIO Medical Centre team for helping us become parents after some very challenging hopeless years."
 
Ninke, The Netherlands