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‘We tend to blame it on the women’: Why is it still so difficult to talk about male infertility? Stories that help break the silence from Cameroon and Uganda

What you need to know:

Phiona Nanozi’s irregular menses started when she was still in Senior Three. But she was unbothered because this meant she was free from associated inconveniences. She later learnt that she had polycystic ovarian syndrome that made it difficult for her to have babies, a condition she later overcame.

After an afternoon nap, Hezekiah jumps onto his mother’s lap and pushes her breasts, making some funny noise as if he is riding. Abraham intervenes and next thing, they are fighting over mum’s body—Abraham pulling Hezekiah down. Their father comes and takes away Abraham to end the chaos.

Losing a pregnancy can be stressing, but repeated miscarriages can leave permanent emotional gashes to the couple struggling to have a baby.

Frustration grows deeper usually due to the hardly accessible professional evaluation and treatment because there are few specialized clinics dedicated to recurrent pregnancy loss.

Three years ago, a couple visited Women’s Hospital International and Fertility Centre, Kampala, seeking remedy to frequent miscarriages. The woman had miscarried three times, losing five babies (two sets of twins and a single baby) in 12 years.

As science and technology keep advancing, fertility management isn’t left behind because new drugs are added to the stock.

Meanwhile, infertility continues to become a major global health concern as couples and individuals from all walks of society frequently visit fertility clinics to see a doctor.

Although it is a medical condition, some communities especially in Africa, will always tag traditional beliefs towards one’s struggle (and sometimes failure) to sire biological children.

After my article that was published here recently, one ardent reader of this publication emailed me.

His concern was about men who refuse to go for fertility checkups irrespective of the years spent in a childless marriage. His argument was that such men believe infertility is solely a woman’s problem.

He cited an anecdote from the novel Burden of Failure, in which a couple resolved for a divorce following failure to have children despite the woman’s strenuous efforts to have the husband undergo medical tests. Instead, the husband excused himself, claiming that a certain powerful man had assured him that it was his wife’s problem, even when he failed to impregnate another woman he secretly consorted with.

During one of my field visits in eastern Uganda while on a project about infertility, one woman intimated to me about how the community dubbed her ‘mother of nothing’.

She was given this name because she has never given birth. Namuddu is currently aged 62 with no child of her own. Her experience reflects the many childless couples who are living in constant stress and strain. Globally, infertility is recognised as perhaps one of the most debilitating and exasperating conditions most couples grapple with today.

While I was checking through records at my workplace, I stumbled into a topic of Fibroids. I read through many cases, but one stood out. This woman, whose identity I must protect, visited our fertility hospital a few years ago. 

Mate Fertility, the new Los Angeles startup launching today with $2.8 million in financing, has a mission to create a more inclusive network of family planning services for people struggling with the high cost and low availability of fertility clinics around the country.