According to a recent WHO report, which emphasizes the prevalence of the condition, an estimated 1 in 6 people worldwide suffer from infertility.
Infertility rates, which are defined as the inability to conceive after a year of unprotected sex, are comparable across all nations and regions, according to a WHO report released on Monday.
Dr. Gitau Mburu, a fertility research scientist at the WHO, stated on Monday that according to their analysis, the global prevalence of lifetime infertility was 17.5%, or 1 in every 6 people.
According to his statement, the incidence rate of infertility is unaffected by a country’s income level.
Lifetime prevalence in high-income countries was 17.8%, while it was 16.5% in low- and middle-income nations. This difference, once more, was not material or significant.
However, the report found that there are differences in how much people spend on fertility treatments and how accessible they are.
According to Mburu, “people in the poorest countries were found to spend a significantly greater proportion of their income on a single cycle of IVF or fertility care compared with wealthier countries,” exemplifying the fact that there is a high risk of health care access inequality in this area.
The focus that the WHO report places on infertility is not only unexpected but also welcome, according to Dr. David Keefe, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at the NYU Langone Fertility Center in New York.
Global public health organizations typically highlight overpopulation as a major public health concern.
“It’s been known for some time that infertility is much more common than anyone wants to think about. Having a child and starting a family is kind of a worldwide dream or aspiration for people from every country, from every region, so the content of that report did not surprise me” says Keefe, who was not involved in the WHO research.
He further said, “He was surprised the World Health Organization came out to support it”.
He said that it was a welcome admission that the population was declining in general. “It is encouraging to see that this issue is a global one and that more policy and strategy attention needs to be given to it.”
The analysis of infertility data from 1990 through 2021 is part of the WHO report, which is referred to as the “first of its kind in a decade.” The information came from 133 previously published studies on the prevalence of infertility.
The goal of this analysis, according to Mburu, was to produce updated data on the global and regional estimates of the prevalence of infertility. To do this, Mburu analyzed all of the data available from various countries while making sure to take into account various study approaches.
A lifetime prevalence of infertility, or the percentage of people who have ever experienced infertility during their reproductive lives, is estimated by the researchers to be 17.5% in 2022 based on the data.
The percentage of people who are infertile at any given time, whether it is now or in the past, was calculated to be 12.6% in 2022.
Although the data indicated some regional variation in the prevalence of infertility, with the Western Pacific having the highest lifetime prevalence at 23.2% and the Eastern Mediterranean having the lowest at 10.7%, the WHO report concluded that these regional variations were neither significant nor conclusive based on the data.
