Delegates at the meet at IGIMS in Patna on Sunday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Nov. 6: Increased awareness campaigns can help overcome infertility, cases of which are on the rise in the state, believe experts.

Speakers at a continued medical education programme on “Reproductive health and infertility”, expressed concern over growing number of infertility cases.

The experts were speaking at reproductive biology department at Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) in the capital today.

“Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term. There are many biological causes of infertility, some of which may be bypassed with medical intervention,” said Dr Kalpana Singh, assistant professor, department of reproductive biology.

She also said such cases are rising in Bihar on an alarming rate mainly because of late marriages, infection of reproductive tract, changing lifestyle patterns and environment pollutants.

She added that because of rapid increase in the number of infertile couples visiting the health facilities, the department felt the need to organise a continued medical education on ovarian-stimulation to train the doctors of Bihar regarding the management of infertility and create a mass awareness through media.

Dr D.K. Nayer, a veteran in dealing with infertility-related cases, spoke about different drugs, which are used to stimulate ovaries and achieve high pregnancy rate. He stressed that with judicious use of these drugs, experts can carry out 350-400 in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycles per year with a success rate of 35-45 per cent.

“In-vitro fertilisation can be used to overcome female infertility because of problems of the fallopian tube, making natural fertilisation difficult. It may also assist in male infertility, where there is defect in the sperm quality and in such cases intracytoplasmic sperm injection may be used, where a sperm cell is injected directly into the egg cell. This is used when sperm have difficulty penetrating the egg and in these cases the partner’s or a donor’s sperm may be used,” he elaborated.