A recent survey has revealed that approximately 46 per cent of Indians who are looking for medical assistance for giving birth to a child and are in the age group of 31 to 40 years are sterile. This implies that they have been failed to give birth to a baby even after being at it for 2 years. The survey was conducted across 9 cities in the country – Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Agra, Kolkata, Kochi and Chennai and took into account 2,562 patients. It was named “Helping Families” and had the endorsement of the Indian Society for Assisted Reproduction (ISAR). This survey was organized by a pharmaceutical company and involved doctors as well.
Another survey was also conducted with 100 specialists on infertility and it revealed that 63 per cent of people who were discovered to be sterile were in the age group of 31 to 40 years. According to doctors, the major reasons behind such a condition are changes in lifestyle, added levels of stress as well as late marriages and the matter worth worrying in this context is that this trend is catching on. Dr. Hrishikesh Pal, who is the President Elect of ISAR 2014 and also the scientific director of the Advanced Infertility Centre at the Lilavati Hospital, has stated that almost 20 per cent of infertile patients are required to participate in the Assisted Reproduction Technology treatment (ART) and others can be assisted with normal processes.
The rate of occurrence of infertility as evident from this survey can be termed as pretty high but doctors are of the opinion that these people comprise only 5 to 10 per cent of the general community. The rate had in fact dropped by 17 per cent between 2000 and 2011 and there is a good chance that it can go up again. The survey found that people in Mumbai are more broad-minded when it came to looking for medical help for their infertility as compared to the other cities up north.
However, in a startling statistic, 54 per cent of the people who were part of the survey in Mumbai are of the opinion that having a child depends on divine will and thus do not seek or take treatment at the correct time. However, for Delhi the figure is greater and stands at 71 per cent. Doctors have stated that there are several reasons for the less than adequate sperm count among men like higher amount of stress, smoking, a poisonous environment all around and others.
There are also other reasons such as the pain and bad name associated with seeking treatment for not having a child that are making people not go for corrective treatment at the right time. Well personally, I think that the word lifestyle is an important one in the present context – it is the major reason behind critical and often incurable ailments like diabetes and cancer. People nowadays are running for luxuries in life and have no time for mundane activities like healthy eating, regular exercise of some sort, if not a workout, and methods such as meditation to relieve stress. It’s time, I think, that these things came in vogue. Otherwise these problems will assume more significant proportions and soon there will be a time when no doctor or medicine will be able to help these hapless people.
