KOCHI, 11 April (The Hindu): Increasing number of couples in the State are reporting infertility in the early years of their married life and this could result in a negative growth of population in the State, says Fessy Louis T., the organising secretary of the 15th national conference of the Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction 2010, now on here.

If the situation continues, there could be a change in the population count of the State in the century's third decade, he said.

Dr. Louis told The Hindu said the trend is mostly found among couples working in the IT sector where there is less co-habitation among the partners. The working hours too cut into their private lives, making life stressful. While in some cases, counselling the couples provides a positive result, many need to go in for some kind of treatment.

Some of the main challenges of assisted reproduction have been the high cost in a developing country like ours, he said.

Some of the European countries where the population is on the negative growth, the government is funding assisted reproduction treatment, he said.

Medical help: More couples are coming to clinics to find the cause of infertility and to find a way out with scientific help, Dr. Louis said. One of the main scientific challenges in the field is that even if an embryo may be formed in vitro (outside the body in test tubes), there is only a 40 per cent success rate of translating it into pregnancy.

Some of the other challenges in assisted reproduction lie in enacting effective laws, said Dr. Louis. The Indian Council of Medical Research has brought out a draft of rules for donors of eggs as well as surrogacy. These are in the process of being finalised, he said.

The three-day national conference of the society that began here with pre-conference workshops on Friday would be discussing some of their key issues including the ethics in the practice of assisted reproduction. Sadhana K. Desai, president of ISAR, presided.

Shreyas Padgaonkar, secretary general of ISAR and K. K. Gopinathan, organising chairperson were among those who spoke on the occasion. About 700 delegates are participating in the conference and there would be more that 60 paper presentations on various topics.