One out of every six people worldwide is affected by infertility.
Those numbers were part of a new report released Monday by the World Health Organization (WHO). The report determined that the condition is becoming more common.
“In our analysis, the global prevalence of lifetime infertility was 17.5%, translating into 1 out of every 6 people experiencing it in their lifetime,” Dr. Gitau Mburu, a scientist of fertility research at WHO, said Monday in a statement.
“Lifetime prevalence of infertility does not differ by income classification of countries,” he said. “Lifetime prevalence was 17.8% in high-income countries and 16.5% in low- and middle-income countries, which, again, was not a substantial or significant difference.”
The report also found, understandably, that people in poorer countries who find difficulty in conceiving and bearing children have a harder time affording the necessary fertility treatments.
“People in the poorest countries were found to spend a significantly larger proportion of their income on a single cycle of IVF or on fertility care compared with wealthier countries,” Mburu said, “exemplifying that this is an area with high-level risk of inequality in access to health care.”
The analysis spans over three decades’ worth of information.
“The data which we analyzed for this report was from 1990 to 2021, and during that period, we did not see evidence of increasing rates of infertility. However, the way the data was arranged, it was not really organized to answer that question,” Dr. James Kiarie, head of contraception and fertility care at WHO, said Monday, according to CNN. “We cannot, based on the data we have, say that infertility is increasing or constant – so we must say that probably the jury is still out on that question.”
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