O-116 Benefits
Authors: Schmidt L 
Published: June 2023

The World Health Organization’s Sustainable Development Goal 3.7 covers sexual and reproductive health to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, including family planning, information & education and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies.

Globally, infertility is one of the most frequent chronic diseases among men and women of reproductive age. Infertility is associated with a number of different risk factors from medical diseases some being congenital; various infections like tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections like chlamydia; health-behaviour like smoking, obesity, use of cannabis, advanced age; unsafe abortions; insufficient access to good quality pregnancy care and delivery care; and reproductive risk factors at workplaces and in the environment. In many cases infertility is preventable by reducing risk factors. In order to prevent infertility, national strategies are needed on an individual and societal level.

One of the important strategies is to raise fertility awareness for everyone – this includes increased fertility awareness for young adults, their parents, health care staff, teachers and others who are in contact with young adults, but also politicians and stakeholders who have a huge impact on how to organize our societies including sufficient access to safe reproductive care to support people to have the children they desire (or to stay childfree if they prefer).

On a global level, surveys and interview studies have repeatedly shown that a high proportion of people have insufficient knowledge regarding fertility and risk factors for infertility, and they falsely believe that medically assisted reproduction is nearly always successful. The studies also show that many people are aware of their limited knowledge. Recent studies find that young adults express a need for being better educated in this field and many prefer a course in sexual education including fertility knowledge when they are undergoing their youth education. Study participants prefer to have fertility knowledge in advance in order better to take care of their fertility potential when they desire to have children.

It is also of importance to increase fertility awareness among parents, as a proportion of young adults talk to their parents about when to have children. Parents especially in high-income countries could encourage their children to postpone family building to ages where it could be difficult for their sons and daughters to have sufficient time to have the number of children they desire. Other studies show that also health care professionals like doctors and nurses outside of the fertility field have limited fertility knowledge and hence could give their patients poor advice when it comes to reducing infertility risk factors and when to seek medically assisted reproduction.

There are several benefits of globally raising fertility awareness for everyone: 1) to ensure that people are able to make well-informed decision-making regarding their own family building. 2) To prevent infertility and reduce the proportion of people in need of medically assisted reproduction. 3) To be able to organize societies to become family friendly. 4) To support NGOs and others to fight for universal access to safe sexual and reproductive health care including access to contraception, safe abortions and safe pregnancy and delivery care. 5) To secure sufficient access to high-quality medically assisted reproduction for those in need of treatment to become parents. 6) To stop using harmful substances that impact fertility at workplaces and in the environment.