by Dr.Roy

Created on: August 29, 2007   Last Updated: August 31, 2007

INFERTILITY:REMEDY VESUS CHRISTIAN MORALS
Infertility as defined by the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary is the inability to produce by people, animals or plants. But in medicine, a couple is said to be infertile
a.if pregnancy does not result after a year of normal marital relationship without contraceptives or
b.if the woman conceives but aborts regularly.

In the early eighties, about 10% of marriages were infertile. More, recent studies however postulated a higher percentage. The changing dynamics of our society today is responsible for the increase. A report published by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine states that "the average age of child bearing has increased over the past three decades as women have pursued higher education and careers and postponed marriages". The changing life styles of men (what they do, eat or drink) have not helped matters.

Generally, female infertility may be due to nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalance, and developmental anomalies of the reproductive organ, infections or tumors. In Africa,our culture has the erroneous impression that the man is always fertile. Whereas the male partner is at fault in about 40% of the cases. However, male infertility is usually due to sperm deficiencies (low sperm count or azoospermia ie: absence of sperms, morphologic abnormalities, or impaired motility.)
At times both the male and female are found to be morphologically and physiologically normal but yet unable to reproduce.

The remedy for identified infertility can be medical, psychological, sociological or spiritual. The medical science has made tremendous achievements in what is now known as assisted reproduction technology (ART).This includes all kinds of fertility-treatments in which both egg and sperm are handled. According to information from Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, some types of fertility treatments includes:

AI (ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION) - where the semen is introduced into the female reproductive organs by other than natural means.
GIFT (GAMETE INTRAFALLOPIAN TRANSFER) here the eggs are removed from the woman's ovary, combining with sperm and using an instrument to place the unfertilized eggs and the sperm into the woman's fallopian tube.
ICSI (INTRACYTOPLASMIC SPERM INJECTION) this involves a direct injection of a single sperm into an egg in the woman ovary
ZIFT (ZYGOTE INTRAFALLOPIAN TRANSFER) here the woman's eggs are fertilized with sperm outside her body and the resulting fertilized egg is then

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