One in five couples in Iran is sterile

Muhammad Rehmanpour-Tehran

Iranian society is classified as one of the youngest societies in the world, and the Iranian Statistics Center indicates that 44.6% of the total population of 83 million people are under 29 years old.

However, Iranian society faces several challenges that threaten its future during the coming decades, most notably the spread of the one-child policy among families, the high rate of aging growth, the low rate of marriage and the low rate of youth growth in the country, according to the Director General of the Bureau of Statistics and Population in the "Iranian Souls" department (births), Ali is the biggest grief.

Prevalence of infertility
With the expansion of civil life and the changing methods and lifestyles in Iran, another factor has emerged that poses a threat to the future of Iranian society and its population, which is the prevalence of infertility among husbands, especially among men.

The official and unofficial figures for infertility in Iran differ, and according to the latest census referred to by the Assistant Minister of Health in Therapeutic Affairs Qasim Jan Babai in December 2018, three million couples in Iran suffer from the problem of infertility.

According to the head of the Scientific Society of Embryology in Iran, Dr. Muhammad Mahdi Akhundi, in April 2017, according to the census conducted in 2016 in Iran, the number of infertile and sterile women reached nearly five million pairs, out of 24 million and two hundred thousand families, if The infertility rate (20%) was taken into account.

High rate of infertility among men
Dr. Ali Sadiqi Tabbar, head of the Ibn Sina Center for the Treatment of Infertility, told Al-Jazeera Net that the rate of infertility in Iranian provinces is different, and ranges between approximately 16 and 22% (i.e. one pair out of five pairs).

Sadiqi Tabbar pointed out that infertility is applied to every couple who try to have children during a whole year and did not succeed in it, adding that men in industrial and large cities are more at risk of infertility due to sperm sensitivity in men compared to women.

In the same context, Dr. Nasser Amir Jannati, director of the male infertility clinic at the Ibn Sina Center, said last August to the official IRNA agency that disorders in sperm production are the most common cause of male infertility, adding that these disorders have genetic causes Or acquired, and causes often arise from often controllable jobs, environments, and lifestyles.

Causes of infertility in men
Doctors and specialists in the field of infertility agree that changing the way of life from eating foods that contain preservatives and exposure to high temperatures and excessive use of "sauna and Jacuzzi", or placing computers on the legs for long periods, in addition to obesity and lack of movement, all contribute to low sperm production For men.

The urologist and infertility specialist at Harnak Abadpur also indicated in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net that the delay in marriage and continuous exposure to all types of harmful rays such as mobile phones, x-gamma and various chemicals, as well as smoking and alcohol in addition to wearing underwear and tight pants, as well as breathing the polluted air with lead And the use of hormonal drugs, such as bodybuilding drugs, are key factors that reduce sperm production in humans.

recognizable improvement
With the development of science and technology and centers for infertility treatment in Iran, the treatment of infertility has witnessed a remarkable development, as more than 80% of all types of infertility in the couple are successfully treated, and many centers launched the slogan of the end of the infertility journey, according to what Dr. Ali Sadiqi Tabbar indicated.

In spite of this, we note that the rate of infertility rises day after day for several reasons, the most prominent of which is the discontinuation of treatment due to the inability of couples to pay the cost of treatment, which is low compared to countries in the region or other regions.

Also among the reasons are the reluctance to repeat the attempt and follow-up treatment, which requires patience for certain periods to obtain the desired result by the husbands, in addition to the lack of infertility centers in all Iranian regions, as well as the lack of consent of some to strengthen or modify pregnancy genes in the laboratory.

More recently, as a result of the spread of culture among people, the Iranian society’s perception of infertility among husbands - in terms of holding women alone responsible for not giving birth as it was in effect - changed, so that Iranian society realizes, through recent research and investigations, that men are more vulnerable to infertility due to the nature of their work and the environment in which they are present. And also changing their lifestyle.