Infertility Awareness Week ends with an alarming result: Professor Samir Hamamah, Head of the Department of Reproductive Biology at Montpellier University Hospital, author of a national report on the causes of infertility, a state of deterioration worldwide.
In France, 3.3 million people, men and women, are affected by infertility.
Samir Hamamah, head of the Department of Reproductive Biology at Montpellier University Hospital, submitted a report to the government on the causes of infertility last February. Midi Libre—Michael ESDOURRUBAILH
Earlier this year you submitted a report to the government that should lead to the development of a national strategy to combat infertility. How can you raise awareness of the problem?
I’ll let you in on a secret: Ten days ago I was at a demonstration in California. One of Joe Biden’s advisors came to read a statement from Joe Biden on reproductive health and women’s health. The subject is now treated at the highest level. The forecasts are alarming: in 2100 we will no longer be 12 billion, as demographers had announced, but 4 billion. Finally, Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea have fertility rates below the replacement level, which is 2.1 children per woman. What about global growth including Africa? It has been declining for two centuries. Even in poor countries. Take Sierra Leone: the birth rate has gone from 6 children per woman to less than 4 children per woman.
Questions about infertility or lifestyle?
For many reasons: there is an increase in infertility, +0.3% and +0.4% per year in men and women respectively, but also due to emerging diseases and societal causes. Today the rate in France is 1.83 children per woman. Ten years ago we were at 2.2. In Italy today it is 1.2. Russia is at 0.9. Spain, Portugal, 1.3. Germany, 1.5.
We have to anticipate: today we talk a lot about drought, ecosystem change and loss of biodiversity, it’s living things that are disappearing. I don’t see how plants and frogs would disappear even without humans.
What are the main causes of infertility?
There are three: medical causes, not to mention 10% to 15% unexplained causes. Environmental causes: Every day we are unknowingly exposed to a hundred chemical molecules to which disruptors present in cosmetic products, lipsticks, perfumes… are added. I also call on the government to inform about the launch of an awareness logo on a collective and individual scale. Finally, there are the social causes, namely the shift in the average age at first birth. Twenty-five years ago in France it was 24 years, today we are not far from 31 years because women are more and more long-term students. As long as society does not give women the opportunity to reconcile private and professional life, the average age of the first child will continue to fall. We “produce” a form of infertility that we could have avoided. Hence the interest in the revision of the bioethics laws last summer…
Reproductive health is an indicator of general adult health
Men and women have seized the opportunity to keep their eggs and sperm to counter the late pregnancy hypothesis?
Between 29 and 37 years for women, 29 and 45 years for men, you can, if you wish, preserve your gametes. At Montpellier University Hospital we have an activity increase of +20% to +25% due to non-medical, societal maintenance. The ministry has just alerted the regional health authorities to issue special permits to shorten waiting times. For this it is necessary to authorize more and more public and private centers. There are solutions that depend only on us, including environmental causes. The prevention program is beginning to bear fruit. But prevention doesn’t start at age 29, you have to start in middle school and not just talk about abortion and contraception when you talk about sexual health, you have to talk about reproductive health too. Because it is also a marker of general health in adulthood.
This means?
Women with premature ovarian failure live 5 to 7 years less. Genomics platforms have made it possible to sequence many genes involved in cancer. I have proposed and it has been included in the Biomedical Agency’s 2022-2025 plan that we take care of the health of the mother in the case of egg donation and the father in the case of sperm donation.
Are there as many men as women?
Yes, a third of men and a third of women, not to mention idiopathic infertility, the causes of which are unknown, around 10% to 15%.
Are we on the right path to consciousness?
I tend to say yes, but not enough. The implementation of a national strategy to combat infertility should not take long, it follows the report that I have coordinated with about twenty experts. It was time. This report has already been translated worldwide.
Infertility is still considered a shameful disease
Infertility remains a drama today?
It is still considered a shameful disease. We don’t talk about it too much. But for those who experience it, it’s like the sky is falling on their heads: Married life is threatened, life refocuses on doctor appointments. Yes, it’s traumatic! It’s time to raise awareness about reproductive health, and this national week needs to do just that. We need to get this disease out of anonymity. There are as many infertile people in the world as there are diabetics, but it is easier to talk about diabetes than infertility. Because infertility affects people, God, the family, society.
There are too many of us on earth, isn’t that good news at last?
This will no longer be the case in Africa in the years to come. China will grow from 1.5 billion inhabitants to 750 million. Today there are 70 million infertile Chinese. There are not enough IVF centers in the country. The city of Moscow alone has 82 IVF centers while there are 103 in France. Israel, population 6 million, has 30 IVF centers… Japan is at 1 child per woman, South Korea at 1.1… Countries will disappear. The geopolitical impact will be enormous! We need to preserve the human species, that’s what it’s all about. And let me remind you that assisted reproduction is not a magic wand: it has a 20% success rate.
Testimonial: Audrey Huynh “was that hitchhiker who stays at the motorway service station,” she made a book out of it
With “Infertile for the worst and best” (1), Audrey Huynh, nurse in the Hérault, provides the diary of six years of fighting infertility, marked by a total of ten attempts at medically assisted insemination, including 5 IVF, 3 egg donations… “I I didn’t give a medical certificate, it’s not the nurse who is speaking. It’s a diary that I really kept so my child could know his story,” explains the young woman, who was unable to carry it her pregnancy project.
She looks like a lot of women: “I happened to be taking two pills a day when I was 20 for fear of getting pregnant and thought a child was within reach for the first jerk!” But by a little over 30 she has ovarian failure, and she is discover in her medical cross that she also has endometriosis. His couple, who are celebrating their 25th birthday this year, persevered, and the book also tells “a very beautiful love story”. Even her friendships, in the storms caused by misunderstanding and misunderstanding, she herself went “from the phase of anger and misunderstanding to resilience, I finally accepted” without making the decision to adopt a child.
“At one point, I was that hitchhiker who stays at the highway rest stop,” testifies Audrey Huynh, who writes for couples engaged in the process of assisted medical procreation, but not only: “If the book can also be read by readers who are not directly affected by the problem… I also speak to them because I have suffered so much from the clumsiness of those around me!”
Conclusion in retrospect: “Having a child is not an end in itself”.
(1) To order “Infertile for the Worst and Best”, semicolon editions (20 euros), you must go through the author’s Instagram account, Infertile_mais_pas_que