Eritrea Establishes First Sperm Bank in Horn of Africa

Asmara — Eritrea’s Minister of Health, Her Excellency Ms. Amina Nurhussein and the Commander of Zone 2, Col. Zerit Aynom jointly inaugurated Eritrea’s first Sperm Bank in Dekemhare town.
In the inauguration ceremony, Her Excellency, outlined that the Eritrean government and its collaborators have been working to construct a center dedicated towards the preservation of the unique breed of Eritreans and Eritrean fighters of the EPLF.
According to the Minister, the center has been established heeding mounting calls to preserve a special generation of youth that brought about Eritrea’s independence against all odds.
The Minister went on to elaborate that in the future the center is expected to work with Halibet National Referral Hospital’s Artificial Insemination Department in providing sperm samples to mothers who want to give birth to patriotic and heroic citizens without leaving anything to chance.
The sperm bank, which is the only one of its kind in the Africa, has been named Ararig in honor of EPLF’s field maternity ward, in which many of the offsprings of EPLF fighters were delivered.
Patriot-14 Gene

Lead Scientist and First Author of the Study, Dr. Samson Abay
The establishment of the sperm bank comes right after Eritrean researchers at the May-Nefhi Institute of Technology(MIT) identified 104 potential inherited gene mutations that are being collectively called PATRIOTIC-14, and are thought to contribute to the patriotism of an Eritrean adult using the so-called next-generation genome sequencing.
The investigators say their study is one of the first of rare genetic variations in EPLF fighters, which, in contrast to most previous studies of common variation, can provide a more direct insight into the biology underlying the patriotic and heroic nature of the generation of the fighters.
The report on the work published on June 19 in JEMO Science, led by Samson Abay,  M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the May-Nefhi Institute of Technology,  affirms the need for DNA from a vast patient Eritrean population to definitively confirm the role of those rare mutations identified using the most advanced genome sequencing techniques.

source :source : The awaze tribune