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Lack of research and misdiagnosis is forcing couples, disproportionately women, into gruelling fertility treatment.
When a couple struggles to conceive, you would expect both partners to be treated equally during the process of diagnosis. But fertility care still leans heavily toward invasive focus on the woman and little attention on the man.
Not only does this imbalance place the onus of fertility struggles onto women, who then face an isolating sense of guilt and shame – but thanks to a lack of research into male infertility (despite men accounting for 50% of all infertility cases) many couples end up in IVF clinics before anyone has seriously looked into the male partner’s health.
New research by The Guardian has found that GPs are failing to grapple with male infertility and leaving men at their ‘lowest ebb’ as they navigate an alienating and complex medical system.
Many causes of male infertility are treatable, writes Rachel Hall, with the most common being treated via surgery or lifestyle adjustments.
And yet while 5-10% of men in the UK face fertility issues, there is a lack of awareness on the subject within medical circles.
‘I don’t think the issue has ever gone away or received the attention it deserved,’ says Vaibhav Modgil, an honorary clinical professor at the University of Manchester.
According to Modgil, most couples struggling to conceive are seen by gynecologists, who predominantly specialise in women’s health. The irony is that women’s health is shockingly underfunded and under-researched in almost all areas – including reproductive health. And yet when it comes to fertility, they still carry the burden of treatment.
That’s not to say the experience of misdiagnosis isn’t awful for the men affected, but its women who shoulder the medical consequences – in many cases undergoing a treatment for a problem that wasn’t theirs to begin with.
This happens despite the fact that male infertility accounts for half of all cases. One of the most frequent causes, varicocele, is straightforward to diagnose and can be fixed with a simple surgical procedure. Other issues can be addressed through medical treatment or lifestyle changes.
But many GPs lack training in male fertility, and the NHS has very few specialists who focus on men’s reproductive health. Fertility clinics are often run through gynaecology departments, so the structure of care itself pulls attention toward the woman’s body, even when that isn’t where the problem lies.
