infertility “affects everyone in every country”, reacts Tuesday April 4 on franceinfo, Estelle Dautry, journalist, co-author of “Infertile generation?: from distress to business, investigation into a taboo” (editions Otherwise, 2022), while the WHO (World Health Organization health) reveals on Tuesday that approximately one in six people worldwide suffer from infertility. This is a problem “major sanitary” which affects 17.8% of rich countries and 16.5% of poorer countries. There is therefore an urgent need to increase access to affordable quality care, according to the WHO. “The first cause of infertility is age”explains Estelle Dautry, but also “the lifestyle” And “endocrine disruptors”. “We must lift the taboo.”
franceinfo. According to the WHO, “people with an infertility problem often suffer from anxiety and depression” and there is also “an increased risk of domestic violence which is associated with infertility”is it documented?
Estelle Dautry. What is certain is that couples often find themselves very isolated. And all the situations where you are isolated, where you don’t dare talk about it, where you have no help and no psychological support are situations where there can be violence. We don’t really have any figures, but what is certain is that the taboo must be lifted so that women can talk about it, so that men can talk about it, so that doctors are better support people, so that there is a psychological follow-up to avoid this violence. We are not alone. There is obviously his attending physician in general and the midwives who do a very good gynecological follow-up to whom we can turn. And then there are patient associations. But it’s true that going through the process of contacting or talking to someone is always difficult. In general, we start talking about it when we’ve been in chess for months, we can’t have a child and we’re already in trouble.
franceinfo. Is infertility a question of poverty or social background?
It affects everyone, no doubt. Everyone, in every country. We are really all concerned. In developed countries, we have children later and later, so we are increasingly confronted with these difficulties. Now, in France, it affects working couples as well as senior executive couples, in big cities as well as in the countryside. The first cause of infertility is age and it is linked to the fact that we start having children later and later. But it’s not just age at all. There are also all the factors related to our way of life. It’s tobacco, alcohol, overweight, a sedentary lifestyle. All this affects both sperm and fertility in women. And then there is everything that depends on our environment. These are the endocrine disruptors that we will find them everywhere: in the paint of our apartment, in cosmetics, in our food. That’s why it affects everyone.
It is impossible to escape it. When we do tests on pregnant women and analyze a hair, French pregnant women are all affected by this pollution. They all have 100% contamination, whether by phthalates, bisphenol before, whatever the product, everyone is contaminated. The only ones that escape it, according to an American study, is a very specific population. It is a religious population that lives in a remote area, grows its own vegetables and generally has very little contact with the rest of society. For that to change, there would really have to be a change in society, a change in the environment and in everyone’s way of life. So a priori, it will get worse. There are American studies that rather predict that in 2050, the majority of couples will need PMA to have a child.
However, there are difficulties in accessing PMA or IVF?
We are lucky in France to have 100% support for infertile couples, but you still have to have access to the public hospital and do the whole procedure in public. There are still inequalities. There are medical deserts. This also concerns gynecology and assisted reproduction. If you are in a region where you do not have a general practitioner, for example, you have even less chance of accessing a gynecologist and an assisted reproduction service. But even if you are in town, there are medium-sized towns in which there is no public assisted reproduction service, only a private clinic. So it’s still going to cost you money.