Infections in the reproductive system remain the leading cause of infertility among women in sub-Saharan Africa, a specialist has revealed.
Dr Nowiah Dennis said 85 per cent of women with infertility issues had a history of untreated or undiagnosed infection in their reproductive system.
Dr Dennis, a Liberian with vast experience in the area, described the percentage as too high compared to just 33 per cent for the rest of the world, stressing that most of the incidence or prevalence of infertility could be reduced once the continent was able to diagnose and cure infections on time, as well as people’s compliance to treatment.
She said this last Thursday when she made a webinar presentation on infertility.
The webinar was a health media training for journalists organised by Merck Foundation in partnership with the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA).
It was designed to help journalists understand the infertility issue in African communities and to learn the best media practices to cover such issues and raise awareness.
Aside from Dr Dennis, the training was addressed by fertility, psychiatry, diabetes and hypertension experts, as well as eminent media personalities.
Infertility, Dr Dennis explained, was the condition where a lady failed to get pregnant after 12 months of unprotected, more timely sexual intercourse when they are up to 35 years.
She mentioned the infections to include untreated sexually transmitted infections such as gonorrhoea and HIV, adding that in the case of gonorrhoea infections, they were often undiagnosed because they presented with fewer symptoms.
Infection
Explaining how infections could cause infertility, she said the tissues that were mostly affected by these infections were the fallopian tube, where the sperm met the woman’s egg for pregnancy to occur.
She said infections led to scarring of these tubes and eventually blocked them, thereby preventing the sperm of the man from meeting the egg.
Other reasons she cited for sub-Saharan Africa’s high level of infertility included cultural practices such as female genital mutilation, religious practices, low resources in terms of seeking care and poor nutrition, unsafe abortion, exposure to smoking, pelvic inflammatory diseases and environmental pollutants.
Dr Dennis mentioned other causes of infertility to be stress and advised physicians to counsel their patients to de-stress, otherwise the patient might be wrongly diagnosed with infertility.
“As you see, most of these girls, teenagers, that experience unwanted pregnancy, don’t go with the intent of getting pregnant.
Instead, they go with the intent of just having fun. So by having fun, they get pregnant. So please, you need to de-stress,” she advised.
Strategies
She advised females to exercise moderately to increase their chances of getting pregnant, explaining that intense exercise could cause them to lose weight beyond a critical threshold, which in itself could interfere with immune production and eventually lead to infertility.
She said if women decided not to exercise, it could lead to obesity and exposure to the risk of infertility.
“You should eat a balanced diet and maintain a healthy weight.
While we appreciate you eating and exercising, we also encourage people to eat a balanced diet.
Eat little carbohydrates, little protein, vegetables, and stuff like that. It should be balanced so that you can gain more carbohydrates,” she said.
Dr Dennis said smoking, alcohol consumption or abuse of street drugs had an effect on the lungs and could affect fertility.
She urged women who love coffee to limit it before getting pregnant because it has the same effect as taking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.
For those who were addicted to coffee and could not reduce the amount they drank, she suggested they see a doctor or seek guidance from professionals.
Men
Dr Dennis advised men who wanted to optimise their fertility to avoid high temperatures such as taking hot baths and riding bikes over long distances, explaining that excessive temperature, radiation, industrial toxins and drugs contributed to male infertility.
She encouraged them to support their wives while they seek treatment for infertility because the condition could affect both men and women, and that once a spouse had been diagnosed with the problem of conception, the journey was a shared one.