50 Million Couples Experience Infertility

On the Friday before Christmas an article appeared in HealthDay News regarding infertility rates.  It makes me sad to think that almost 50 million couples experience infertility.  However, I don't find it surprising, because I have so many friends who struggled to have their children. 

In 2010, nearly 50 million couples worldwide were unable to conceive a child after five years of trying, according to the study published online Dec. 18 in the journal PLoS Medicine.  For the study, researchers examined 277 national surveys in order to estimate the infertility levels in 190 countries between 1990 and 2010.

50 Million Couples Experience Infertility

The analysis revealed that in 2010, 1.9 percent of women aged 20 who wanted to have children were unable to have their first live birth (primary infertility), and 10.5 percent of women who had previously given birth were unable to have another baby (secondary infertility).

That works out to a total of 48.5 million couples worldwide, study leader Gretchen Stevens, of the World Health Organization, and colleagues explained in a journal news release.

Here's the link to the full article.

My book, Five Strands of Hope, is available here on Amazon.  It is a memoir about my journey through secondary infertility through a horrendous triplet pregnancy.