10m Chinese couples need help in having babies

Pollution, smoking, stress and multiple abortions causing infertility rate to rise


BEIJING - POLLUTION, stress, smoking and multiple abortions are all leading to a rise in infertility in China, where up to one-tenth of Chinese couples may be affected, state media reported.

Sperm counts had fallen noticeably since the 1970s, the Xinhua news agency on Monday quoted Professor Wang Yifei of Shanghai's Jiaotong University as telling a symposium on reproductive health in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

He said sperm counts had decreased from an average of 100 million per ml in the 1970s to 40 million per ml today.

'A certain percentage of the sperm donated by seemingly healthy college boys to our sperm bank in Shanghai is not eligible in terms of sperm count or motility,' Prof Wang said.

No large-scale infertility survey has been carried out in China and statistics are hard to come by, but reports contributed by regional research bodies indicated an average infertility rate of between 7 per cent and 10 per cent among married couples, said Prof Wang.

In the United States, infertility affects about 6.1 million women and their partners, equivalent to 10 per cent of the reproductive-age population, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Experts believe more than 10 million Chinese couples need artificial fertilisation and many are undergoing fertility treatment, Xinhua reported.

Rising wealth resulting from the country's economic boom over the past few decades had contributed to the problem, promoting unhealthy lifestyles, said another academic.

'The problem deserves attention from all walks of life because it threatens the quality and structure of our future population,' said Professor Huang Hefeng of Zhejiang University.

Xinhua added that the issue could exacerbate China's ageing- population crisis.

China is already home to more than half of the old people in Asia and, by 2050, the number of those over 60 will exceed 400 million, accounting for more than 30 per cent of the country's population.

The government says China is in an unenviable and unique position of ageing before it becomes affluent.

And the country's family planning policy limits most urban couples to one child and rural families to two to control population growth and conserve natural resources.

A local official has been fired for having too many children - both with his wife and a mistress - in violation of the strict family planning policies, the Beijing News reported on Monday.

Qin Huaiwen, who headed a construction bureau in Yulin in north-western Shaanxi province, has three daughters with his wife and a son and a daughter by his mistress, the report said.

His family situation was exposed after his mistress complained about the lack of child support, it said. Qin has been charged with adultery and expelled from the Communist Party.

REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS