Male factor can be responsible for infertility among couples – Gynaecologist

 
Dr Fred Achem, President, Society of Gynaecologists and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON), says the “male factor” is one of the  reasons for  infertility among couples.

 
Achem, who said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja, stressed that the “male factor” was “expressed in the quality of the semen” produced by the male partner during sex. 

“So male factor is a very important factor in fertility, and that is expressed in the quality of the semen, the ejaculate that comes out every time the man meets with his wife.
 
“Every aspect of a man’s being is coded into semen, just like a woman’s being is coded into her egg, so that when the sperm and the egg meet, they form a human being with contribution from both of them.
 
“So there is optimum number or quality of semen that needs to be produced at every ejaculate, there is an optimum quality of semen as measured by the motility (movement) and normalcy of the semen.
 
“The four things we use to estimate male fertility, the volume of the ejaculate, the percentage normal for the sperm that are there, how much of the sperm are moving, particularly moving forward and progressing and finally, what is the count per mill of the ejaculate.”

 The gynaecologist said more than half of the cases treated in most gynaecology clinics had to do with infertility issues.
 
 “60 per cent of gynae clinics are because of infertility; 60 per cent of gynae clinics are as a result of people who cannot have babies.
 
“In this part of the world we tend to define people who have not conceived after living together for between six months and one year  as cases that need to be investigated but delay in achieving pregnancy is a way of identifying infertile couples.
 
``Within six months of young people living together we expect 60 per cent of them to achieve a pregnancy, within one year about 70 per cent and within two years 90 per cent of young people living together should have a pregnancy.
 
“The remaining 10 per cent are the ones that would have problems and out of that 10 per cent, 30 per cent of the problem will be from the male, 30 per cent from the female, 30 per cent from both of them and the remaining 10 per cent will be unexplained, we do not know why they have been unable to get pregnant.”
 
He said that a few modern techniques for treating male infertility existed and that such techniques included artificial insemination using the male sperm.
 
“Right now there are very few mortalities of treatment, so most cases we have to make do with the semen the man has and do what is called artificial insemination using husband’s semen, we use donor semen in some cases.
 
``There are those men who do not have a single sperm at all, we  can go into the testis and  probably find one sperm and do what is called icksy that is  Intracytoplasmic sperm injection."
 
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection involces the direct injection of sperm into eggs obtained from In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF), a process of fertilising a woman's egg with a man's sperm externally (outside the body in a laboratory).
 
He, however, added that IVF could also be used as a form of treatment when the sperm count was very low. (NAN)