Where There Is No Doctor: A Health Care Handbook by David Werner

Author:David Werner [Werner, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780942364156
Publisher: Voluntary Health Association of India
Published: 1994-01-15T07:28:00.685706+00:00

244

MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE NOT ABLE

TO HAVE CHILDREN (INFERTILITY)

Sometimes a man and woman try to have children but the woman does not become pregnant. Either the man or woman may be infertile (unable to bring about pregnancy).

Often nothing can be done to make a person fertile, but sometimes something can be done, depending on the cause.

COMMON CAUSES OF INFERTILITY:

1. Sterility. The person’s body is such that he or she can never have children. Some men and women are born sterile.

2. Weaknesses or a nutritional lack. In some women severe anemia, poor nutrition, or lack of iodine may lower the chance of becoming pregnant. Or it may cause the unformed baby (embryo) to die, perhaps before the mother even knows she is pregnant (see Miscarriage, p. 281). A woman who is not able to become pregnant, or has had only miscarriages, should get enough nutritious food, use iodized salt, and if she is severely anemic, take iron pills (p.247). These may increase her chance of becoming pregnant and having a healthy baby.

3. Chronic infection, especially pelvic inflammatory disease (see p. 243) due to gonorrhea or chlamydia, is a common cause of infertility in women. Treatment may help—if the disease has not gone too far. Prevention and early treatment of gonorrhea and chlamydia mean fewer sterile women.

4. Men are sometimes unable to make women pregnant because they have fewer sperms than is normal. It may help for the man to wait, without having sex, for several days before the woman enters her ‘fertile days’ each month, midway between her last menstrual period and the next (see Rhythm Method and Mucus Method, p.291 and 292). This way he will give her his full amount of sperm when they have sex on days when she is able to become pregnant.

WARNING: Hormones and other medicines commonly given to men or women who cannot have babies almost never do any good, especially in men. Home remedies and magic cures are not likely to help either. Be careful not to waste your money for things that will not help.

For a man or a woman who is not able to have a baby, there are still many ways to raise or support children and to lead a happy life:

• Perhaps you can arrange to care for or adopt children who are orphans or need a home. Many couples come to

love such children just as if they were their own.

• Perhaps you can become a health worker or help your

community in other ways. The love you would give to your children, you can give to others, and all will benefit.

• You may live in a village where people look with shame on a woman who cannot have children. Perhaps you

and others can form a group to help care for people

with special needs or to make other contributions to the community, and to show that having babies is not the only thing that makes a woman worthwhile.

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