The treatment of infertility represents one of the most exciting and innovative areas of medicine, with an increasing demand for successful, safe and cost-effective treatments to satisfy the growing number of infertile couples seeking help.
Up to a quarter of all couples may experience problems in conceiving a child, a figure that appears to be rising partly due to the trend to delay marriage and pregnancy. In all, the World Health Organization estimates that there are about 60 to 80 million cases of infertility around the world.
But being infertile doesn’t mean that a couple can’t conceive. Assisted reproductive technology (ART), particularly in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), are used increasingly to resolve a variety of causes of infertility, helped in part, by a growing acceptability of the procedures by the public, and an increased willingness for health service providers and insurance companies to pay.
Growing popularity of ART
Statistics show that about 500,000 ART treatment cycles were performed worldwide in 2000, representing a 37 per cent increase since 1997. Around 60 per cent of all ART procedures are carried out in Europe, primarily due to the availability of public funding.
However, numbers are expected to continue to rise. This makes the availability of cost-effective and successful treatments, such as those available from Ferring, an important decision-making factor for individual couples having to pay for the treatment themselves, private health insurance companies as well as publicly funded fertility services.
Ferring has been involved in the production of remedies for assisted fertility programmes for a decade, and has a portfolio of products with a proven reputation for consistent quality, success and safety.
More than a physical problem
But infertility is more than just a physical problem. While many couples treated for infertility eventually experience the joy of having children, infertility and its treatment generally places a considerable amount of stress on couples’ relationships and personal lives.
Despite today’s success rates there are those couples who do not conceive after several cycles of treatment and may never succeed in getting pregnant. Other routes and options need to be carefully discussed.
Failure to conceive often creates frustration, feelings of inadequacy, anger, guilt and resentment. The successful management of infertility includes both the physical and emotional care of the couple.