Infertility Treatment Seeking Behaviour and its Impact on Infertile Women in India: A Comparative Study

The desire to have one’s own biological children can be strong and compelling so the effects of infertility for women who are unable to conceive are seen socially irrespective. Although many effective programs are running in India for covering the reproductive and maternal health related issues, but till now, the infertility is not taken as an essential component in those programs. The purpose of this paper is to understand the differential in infertility treatment seeking behavior and its respective results in India by developed verses developing states. District Level Household Survey-3, a cross sectional data in India covered 643 994 ever married women. For first time it had a special section of Infertility that covered problems & treatment seeking for infertile ever married women of 15-49 years of age. Results of this study show the proportion of overall infertile women is higher in developing states compare to developed states. The result of the treatment is also in favor of developing states. In developed states only 78.6% of infertile women are seeking the treatment while in developing states its 83.9%. The result of treatment is also effective for developing states as 78.5% of women are conceive while in developed its 61.5%.