Infertility: addressing its causes and providing treatment

Infertility is a serious issue that mostly takes a toll on women emotionally however there is no adequate focus on infertility in India’s reproductive health program. Under this backdrop, this study made an attempt to investigate prevalence rate of infertility by different regions of India and to study their treatment seeking behavior and also try to find out influence of SED characteristics on these issues.
DLHS-III (2007-08) is database for this study and it focus on currently married women aged 20-49 (520279). Bi-variate and multivariate techniques have been used to find out influence of SED characteristics on these issues.
In India around 7percent women have primary infertility and 2.1percent women have secondary infertility problem. Infertility problem was higher among eastern region of India (11.5percent) and lower in northern and western region (7.5percent). Among women who reported infertility problems, around 70percent of women have infertility problem in their first conception and twelve percent have reported infertility problem after live/still births. Eighty percent of women sought treatment for infertility, and this behavior is high in northern region (87percent) and low in north-east women (73.8percent). Incidence of infertility is positively and significantly associated with caste, education, occupation