Rumours began to circulate across the hamlet when word got out that a woman in her mid-30s was expecting a child. Her spouse, who is in his early 40s, has spent more than 18 months working overseas. The rumours spreaders had no idea that the woman was carrying her own husband’s sperm, since he had stored his semen at a sperm bank prior to his departure for work.
One of the few sperm banks in Kathmandu is located in Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital in Thapathali. “We froze the deposited semen in our hospital’s sperm bank,” stated Dr. Shree Prasad Adhikari, the hospital’s director. “The mother is three months pregnant.”More and more Nepalis moving abroad for work has given rise to infertility problems, experts say. Some people who do not get to stay with their spouse for long have of late started using sperm banks, according to doctors.
Paropakar Hospital officials said that at least two women whose husbands had been abroad for over a year are currently pregnant with the sperm their husbands deposited in the hospital’s sperm bank. The bank currently reserves sperm deposited by around a dozen people, they said. Experts say even if sperm banking is on the rise, it is not a solution to the problem of infertility.
“Our country is facing a fertility crisis,” said Dr Bhola Rijal, a senior gynaecologist. “Around 80 percent of women who visit my fertility clinic have infertility problems and in most cases, husbands of the women are either in the Gulf or have worked there for long periods.”
Doctors say that continuous exposure to heat, use of cigarettes, alcohol and tobacco, stress, and harsh living conditions are the reasons for the decline in sperm count among Nepali men. Apart from that, delayed marriage, and separation of the couple for a long time, rise in non-communicable diseases, among others, have fueled serious infertility problems, which are overlooked by all agencies concerned, according to doctors.
In one instance, a woman’s husband, who worked in Saudi Arabia, had come home on a vacation for a month but his wife did not get pregnant during his stay. Concerned, the man consulted the doctors, who advised him to freeze sperm, which helped his wife conceive after around a year and a half.
“The media can convince people that one can get pregnant by her husband’s sperm even if he is not at home for months or years,” said Adhikari, the hospital director. “And sperm banking is the solution.”
Source: Here