All About Pcos » Know more
           |   | For Inquiry : +91 9022594335 | Email: info@gynaecworld.com

A Vision for the infertile in India

It is my privilege to take charge as President of the Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction, and I accept this honor with humility on April 21st, 2017.

India has a strange problem. On the one hand it has the burden of high fertility which the Govt. is handling effectively through various family planning programs, and on the other hand we have the problem of childlessness, with over 7 % of currently married women being childless with serious demographic, social and health implications.

The Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health has reported that childlessness leads to increased maternal and reproductive health problems, increases violence against women, and leads to significantly higher divorces among childless women than those who have proved their fertility.

The study has also very elegantly shown that the difference in childlessness depends on where they reside-whether in urban cites or villages, on their religion, caste and tribe, besides their socio economic and educational status. Infertile women also face immense emotional and psychological trauma especially in India where, infertility is a social stigma in our country.

Infertility is a huge social problem for women in India, whether the infertility is due to causes within a woman or her husband, it is she who is targeted, she is the one who has to visit her gynecologist and reveal her most private information, not once but multiple times to different physicians in the clinic, she is the one who is answerable to everyone asking her “When are you planning to be pregnant?”

If fertility treatment or assisted reproduction such as IVF is required by a couple and they decide to undergo fertility treatment, women may have to take leave from their jobs, or take some time off from their careers in order to reach the clinics as and when required, only because biologically it is they who get pregnant. Besides, not many can afford the high costs of IVF involved, and even if they can manage to afford one or two cycles, of treatment, they easily succumb to unindicated treatment such as egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation, only because they somehow want to get pregnant, and get pregnant quickly.

I understand that the nation needs to focus on our excess population and reduce maternal mortality, but in the process we cannot neglect the problem of infertility! Has anyone asked an infertile woman in rural India or from low socio economic strata of society, what she goes through day after day, when she cannot access medical help only because she is not empowered, nor is she educated, nor does she have the finances, nor the access to fertility therapy?

A woman is entitled to her reproductive rights which includes access to treatment for her infertility. Are we doing anything to help her? I have this agenda uppermost in my mind and it is currently in the pipeline. Through The Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction (ISAR), we will exchange our views with the Government on how we can take this agenda further. Every woman has the right to try for a child, and IVF has given a lot of couples a child of their own, and we need to respect her rights. There is an urgent need to include insurance coverage for infertility services for women, as no treatment related to infertility is covered by insurance, and treatment for infertility is experienced in private clinics. Most of the public hospitals do not offer advanced fertility treatment such as IVF etc.

My mission as President of ISAR will be to bring this agenda center stage by raising awareness on it and advocating for an insurance plan to cover costs of infertility treatment.

Duru Shah
Director, Gynaecworld
Center for Assisted Reproduction & Women’s health
Panel Consultant – Breach Candy Hospital, Jaslok Hospital, Global Hospital
Sindhian Magazine – May 2017

Content
CAPTCHA IMAGE