The agency encourages countries to develop solutions for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infertility, including assisted reproductive technologies.
Nearly one in six people in the world suffers from infertility, as revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO) that made an urgent call to increase access to treatment.
“One person in six in the world is affected by the inability to have a child at some point in their lives,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a report. “This happens regardless of where they live and whatever resources they have,” he said.
For the organism it is a “major health problem” that it affects about 17.8% of the adult population in rich countries and 16.5% of people in poor countries and under development. “This report, the first of its kind in ten years, is revealing of an important fact: infertility does not discriminate,” Tedros said.
The report does not discuss the medical, environmental, or other factors that can cause infertility, or its evolution over time, but it does constitute a record of the prevalence of this problem analyzing studies carried out between 1990 and 2021.
“Infertility affects millions of people,” Tedros said. However, he stressed that this issue “remains under-researched and solutions remain underfunded and inaccessible to manydue to high costs, social stigma, and limited availability.
The WHO defines infertility as “a disease of the male or female reproductive systemdefined as the inability to get pregnant after 12 months or more of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse.” This situation can generate great distress, stigma, and financial hardship.
“Failure is stigmatized”
“There is significant social pressure to procreate. There are countries where pregnancy is linked to perceptions of femininity and what constitutes a couple. Failure is stigmatized“, Pascale Allotey, director of the WHO Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health, told reporters.
“People who have a fertility problem commonly suffer from anxiety and depression” and there is also an increased risk of partner “violence” associated with infertility, he added.
The WHO called on countries to develop solutions for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infertilityincluding assisted procreation technologies, such as in vitro fertilization.
“We want to make sure we break the silence on infertility, ensuring that it is included in sexual and reproductive health policies, services and financing,” WHO doctor Gitau Mburu told reporters.
This report shows the “high global prevalence” of infertility and highlights the lack of data in many countries, especially in Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia.
The organization also called on countries to make an effort to increase the availability of data on this diseasewhich are disaggregated by age and by cause, to help quantify the problem, identify care needs and how to reduce risks.
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