- Live Life Donors Club
Every human being has a right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Individuals and couples have the right to decide the number, timing and spacing of their children. Infertility can negate the realisation of these essential human rights. According to TOI (Bombay Times), there are around 27.5 million couples in India suffering from infertility. Addressing infertility is therefore an important part of realizing the right of individuals and couples to found a family.
A wide variety of people, including heterosexual couples, same-sex partners, older persons, individuals who are not in sexual relationships and those with certain medical conditions, such as some HIV serodiscordant couples and cancer survivors, may require infertility management and fertility care services. Inequities and disparities in access to fertility care services adversely affect the poor, unmarried, uneducated, unemployed and other marginalised populations.
Addressing infertility can also mitigate gender inequality. Although both women and men can experience infertility, women in a relationship with a man are often perceived to suffer from infertility, regardless of whether they are infertile or not. Infertility has significant negative social impacts on the lives of infertile couples and particularly women, who frequently experience violence, divorce, social stigma, emotional stress, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.
In some settings, fear of infertility can deter women and men from using contraception if they feel socially pressured to prove their fertility at an early age because of the high social value of childbearing. In such situations, education and awareness-raising interventions to address understanding the prevalence and determinants of fertility and infertility are essential.
Availability, access, and quality of interventions to address infertility remain a challenge in our country. Diagnosis and treatment of infertility are often not prioritized in national population and development policies and reproductive health strategies and are rarely covered through public health financing. Moreover, a lack of trained personnel and the necessary equipment and infrastructure, and the currently high costs of treatment medicines, are major barriers for people with infertility.
While assisted reproduction technologies (ART) have been available for more than three decades, with more than 5 million children born worldwide from ART interventions such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), these technologies are still largely unavailable, inaccessible and unaffordable in many parts of the world, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMIC).
SFF recognises the importance and impact of infertility on people’s quality of life and well-being, SFF is addressing infertility and fertility care by: