BY AGNES NWORIE, ABAKALIKI
A Consultant Obstetrician, Gynecologist and Endoscopic Surgeon in Alex Ekwueme Federal University Teaching Hospital Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Robinson Onoh, has identified late marriage and infections as the major causes of the high rate of infertility cases in Nigeria.
Onoh who disclosed this during an interview with The Point, maintained that the feasible measures for the prevention of infertility are early marriage, early conception and avoidance of premarital sex.
Onoh explicitly explained that a young girl who gets married early reduces the chance of being infected with sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy, abortion and developing fibroid.
He maintained that the best period for marriage is 20 to 25 years of for females, while 35 to 40 years would be at high risk of getting infections such as Gonorrhea, Staphylococcus, Syphilis, HIV, Hepatitis, and developing fibroid which affects conception either by its position or by the things they produce.
He advocated that women should not delay marriage and pregnancy, adding that the best birth is early marriage and early conception, saying “when a woman has pregnancy, any fibroid that develops undergoes degeneration and that may not cause much problems.”
The physician extensively discussed major causes of infertility in Nigeria.
His words, “Let me explain a little what infertility is, for us we say that infertility is when a female within the reproductive age is unable to achieve pregnancy not minding adequate sexual intercourse with a healthy husband within a period of one year.”
The Obstetrician enjoined government and churches to provide jobs and functional skill acquisition centers for youths to guarantee early settling in marriage.
“Normally, it is expected that every woman if there is adequate exposure to 3 to 5 intercourse within one week, about 85 percent of them will be pregnant. The alarming thing is that there is a high rate of not being able to conceive which is very common especially in developing countries like Nigeria.
“A lot of things could be attributed to that, some of the common things that actually lead to that is the age of marriage. Recently because of the quest for education and riches, young women and men don’t marry early when they are supposed to because culturally a man should acquire enough wealth before marriage. Outside the age of marriage, you find out that there will be chances that the woman or the man may have gotten into multiple relationships and the chances of contracting infectious diseases (STIs) are high.
