Ten million Chinese families suffers infertility
(Chinanews.cn)
Updated: 2006-08-07 10:43 Jinan - In China, there are
230 million married couples at productive age and infertility rate for these
families is 5-10%. In other words, about 10 million families have fertility
problems. For some, their problems can be cured with properly medical treatment,
and 1-2% of these couples can have their babies through In Vitro Fertilization
technology (IVF), or having test tube babies. For the rest of them, however,
their infertility problem can not be resolved with current medical technology.
In Shandong province, several medical institutions that provide Assisted
Reproductive Technology (ART) are often crowded with people. The IVF technology
usually costs 20,000 yuan. For these grassroots medical institutions that do not
have comprehensive medical resources, such as women and children's health care
centers, family planning committees, and private clinics, providing IVF
technology to patients is quite profitable.
Compared with other technologies, Artificial Insemination (AI) technology is
simple to operate. In Shandong, there are over one hundred medical institutions
that provide this service. In large hospitals, operation cost for receiving AI
is around 400 yuan. For some small hospitals, they are willing to do the
operation at 100-200 yuan.
"Misusing the ART, humans seem to be playing a game with God and their fate.
If humans continue to do so, it will lead to a series of problems such as the
degradation of national physical quality, increase of hereditary disease, and
ethical problems," said Chen Zijiang, director of the Genesiology Center under
the Shandong Provincial Hospital.
A staff member from the Shandong Health Bureau said that it was imperative to
work out some rules to constrain the use of the ART technology, since the
technology required qualified medical personnel to implement, and the
application of such technology is linked with social, ethnical, moral and legal
issues. Although the Ministry of Health has ready made related rules to
standardize the use of the ART, these rules are difficult to be implemented at
the grassroots level.
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