Privacy
This page says exactly what this website does with your information, in plain language.
Who is responsible
This website belongs to Dr. Ghina Shami, consultant in reproductive endocrinology and infertility, who consults at Fakih IVF, Al Wasl Road, Jumeirah 1, Dubai, and at First IVF, Dubai Healthcare City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For any question about your data, write to ghina.shami@fakihivf.com.
The inquiry form
The form on the Contact and International patients pages asks for your name, a phone or WhatsApp number, your country, the topic of your inquiry and a short message, plus a consent box. It exists for one purpose: to reply to you, and the legal basis is your consent, given with the checkbox above the buttons. Please do not include medical information in the form or in WhatsApp messages; that belongs in the consultation, where it is recorded in the clinic's own systems in the UAE.
When you choose Send by email, the submission is handled by Netlify, the company that hosts this site, and forwarded to Dr. Shami's clinic inboxes. Netlify processes and stores the submission on servers outside the UAE. A copy stays in the site's hosting dashboard, where it can be deleted on request. Submissions are kept only as long as needed to handle your inquiry and are then deleted. Netlify, Inc. acts as a processor for hosting and form handling.
When you choose Send on WhatsApp, nothing is sent through this website at all. Your device opens WhatsApp with a message drafted from what you typed, and you decide whether to send it. WhatsApp's own privacy policy then applies.
WhatsApp and phone
The WhatsApp buttons and phone links on this site open WhatsApp or your phone app on your device. This website does not see or store those conversations.
The map
The Contact page embeds Google Maps to show the two clinics. When that page loads, your browser connects to Google, which may receive your IP address and set its own cookies. Google's privacy policy applies to that connection.
Cookies and analytics
This website uses Google Analytics 4, a service of Google Ireland Limited and Google LLC, to understand which pages help patients and how the site is used. It runs only after you choose Accept in the cookie banner. Until then no Google Analytics script is loaded, no analytics cookie is set and no request is sent to Google. Consent is the legal basis for this processing.
If you accept, Google Analytics sets two first-party cookies: _ga (distinguishes visitors, kept for 2 years) and _ga_QCCS6BKCS1 (keeps session state for this site, kept for 2 years). The site sends Google the pages you view and clicks on the WhatsApp buttons, with the page and language only, never anything you type. IP addresses are not stored by Google Analytics 4, and Google may process the data on servers outside the UAE, including in the United States, under its own terms.
You can withdraw or change your choice at any time with the Cookie settings link in the footer of every page. Declining or withdrawing consent stops analytics and removes the analytics cookies; the site works exactly the same either way.
Your choice itself is remembered in your browser's local storage under the key consent, so that the banner does not reappear on every page. No other cookies, trackers or advertising scripts are used. The hosting provider keeps standard, short-lived server logs for security.
Your rights
You can ask what information about you is held through this website, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, or withdraw consent for it to be used, by writing to the email address above. Requests are handled within a reasonable time. If you are not satisfied with the answer, you may complain to the UAE Data Office or to the data protection authority in your country.
Last updated September 2026.