- Infertility rate in India is 10 to 14% where 1 out of 6 couples are affected.
- WeCanConceive is a sexual and reproductive health awareness ecosystem that brings together a global compendium of care givers, renowned fertility experts, media partners, health influencers and social enterprises.
India
healthysoch
New Delhi, February 12, 2021:
Commemorating the Sexual & Reproductive Health Day 2021, WeCanConceive, a public awareness initiative and first-of-its-kind infertility support ecosystem has been launched. This platform will provide information about infertility awareness and support for couples having difficulties with infertility, challenges with conception. The ecosystem will help such individuals to successfully traverse through their fertility journey.
This sexual and reproductive health awareness ecosystem brings together a global compendium of care givers, renowned fertility experts, media partners, health influencers and social enterprises. Together, we can bring a positive and strong ecosystem for treating infertility and help couples experience the joy of parenthood.
Speaking at the launch of the initiative Oasis Fertility COO Mr Sudhaker Jadhav explained that there are several couples out there who go through the challenges of infertility all by themselves and have a tough time finding the right solutions and support.
“The idea of #WeCanConceive is to be able to bring all the stakeholders together and provide an ecosystem for those dealing with infertility all of the help at one place,” he said.
“Couples who experience infertility often feel isolated and have to go through many barriers when trying to build their family. The silence and stigma that sometimes surrounds infertility topics or diagnoses is what we aim to eliminate together,” added Oasis Fertility Co-Founder and Medical Director Dr Durga Rao. She said, COVID has highlighted the need for a healthy society and one of the criteria for a healthy society is to have a healthy population. Though our population is high, there are sections in the country where the fertility is coming down significantly and there is an urgent need to take certain precautions. Oasis has always emphasised on prevention. Even the Government wants to sensitise public on this impending problem and is therefore organising the Sexual & Reproductive Health Day and we want to supplement the effort by trying to bring attention to this factor. We want patients to take their health in their own hands, understand the causes of infertility and stop those practices to lead a healthy reproductive life. The very reason that the fertility centres are on the rise is due to infertility becoming rampant. The reason for this is, our lifestyles are going out of hand, factors like pollution, diet and several other factors are causing infertility, therefore people have to take preventive actions to lead a healthy life. This initiative of Oasis is to make the public aware of the problems and how they can negate them, it’s preventive initiative to help people avoid going to a fertility centre. If we don’t act now, this looming problem of infertility is going to impact the future generations. If this generation leads a healthy life, the future generations will also be healthy, or else they will carry all these ill heathy aspects, generation after generation and the consequences are perilous. This initiative to create awareness will curb the deteriorating situation.
She also commented on the declining status of the fertility rates by presenting the statistics as follows.
Total Fertility Rate in India is on Decline | ||
Year | Births per Woman | Annual % Change |
31-12-1950 | 5.907 | |
31-12-1951 | 5.906 | -0.02 |
31-12-1961 | 5.892 | -0.03 |
31-12-1971 | 5.535 | -1.13 |
31-12-1981 | 4.799 | -1.19 |
31-12-1991 | 4.006 | -2.13 |
31-12-2001 | 3.277 | -2.06 |
31-12-2011 | 2.556 | -3.03 |
31-12-2021 | 2.179 | -0.95 |
The objectives of the initiative would be to inform & inspire couples, improve awareness on sexual & productive health, and imbue a sense of empowerment. This will be done by offering safe, affordable, and high quality assistive reproductive technologies, while creating an environment of positivity and hope for improving infertility outcomes.
Oasis India welcomes you to come and be a part of this initiative, you can do so even if you do not have the challenges of infertility – someone you know might do so. Spread the word, spread the positivity of hope that we wish to bring to the lives of those dealing with infertility.
“Many times, it is hope and assurance that is the key to helping many patients. Scientific advancements have now helped us unlock several possibilities to assisted reproduction, so definitely there are ways and means available to be explored, but before we do that we’d like people to have the hope that it is possible. We want to give them all the tools, support and information to start believing, that is what #WeCanConceive is all about,” concluded Oasis Fertility Scientific Head and Clinical Embryologist Dr Krishna Chaitanya. He added, being barren is considered a stigma in the society, especially women are victimised and illtreated for this and the cause for it is lack of awareness on fertility aspect. The lifestyle changes are the cause for this, diet, lack of exercise, pollution, fertilisers and chemicals in food is impacting hormone production in the body, mobile usage has brought in high levels of radiation which impacts sexual and reproductive health. Earlier one in ten couples suffered from infertility, today one in six couple are infertile. So our initiative is to create awareness on the rising infertility problem, to seek timely help, as delay in identification of the problem and treatment can dissipate the chances of bearing children. People shy away from discussing sexual and reproductive problem, one should realise procreation is a natural phenomenon and there is nothing to despise it. Awareness is panacea to stem the rising infertility problem in the society. Globally, the sperm count is declining, it’s not India’s problem alone, in two decades natural conception could be at risk at this rate.
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