By Mary Nnah
Managing Director, Nordica Fertility Centre, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, has appealed to men to go for periodic genital check-ups since they are active players in cases of infertility in marriage.  Ajayi made the call against the backdrop of a general tendency to blame women for infertility when childlessness occurs in marriages. He stressed that most saddening was the fact that the woman took the blame when in actual fact it was the male that is at fault.
He said, “A lot of times, men don’t come out to be tested and then they keep blaming the woman until it becomes a major issue in the marriage. The notion that women are always the culprit when it comes to delay in childbearing should be dispelled.
“Males have a 50 per cent chance of being responsible for infertility in marriages as there were a lot of activities and things they get involved with and indulge in which have a way of depleting their sexual and productive capability.
“There is therefore was an urgent need for men to begin to come out early enough for genital check-ups before their wives grow beyond childbearing age.
“We have realised that a lot of women are so angry that by the time they find out that it is the man that actually has the problem; the woman has grown beyond childbearing age, when she would have gotten pregnant with donor sperm when she was still very young.
“Interestingly all these advancements for fertility are available in Nigeria, so it is your fault if you don’t get knowledge and seize the opportunities available.
“Of course, we are all aware that male infertility appears to be on the increase all over the world. We looked at our own figure here too from a study we conducted four years ago and we found out that when we compare the sperm count of men 10 years before now with sperm count of men three years ago and to the present time, we found a decline of about 30 per cent.
“So we said sperm count appears to be declining at three per cent per year.  And because we are so interested in male fertility, we also looked at our figures again in the last five years and what we also saw again was that 12 per cent of our men had no sperm at all while 38 per cent present had low sperm count.
“Out of every two sperm samples that we took, one had a problem. And therefore we thought that we needed to further ensure that men were aware, so that they can quickly make decisions that will help them out.â€
Ajayi added, “You may see a man with a fine body physique but after examination you realise that he has no sperm at all.
“This is rampant these days, so we thought it is our responsibility to continue to put it on the front burner so that you don’t waste valuable time doing the stupid things within that period.”
Enumerating probable causes of sterility in men, Ajayi said, “We do not know precisely what is responsible for low sperm count in men but we know some contributing factors part of which is genetic, environment, the way that the men these day spend their time – drugs and anabolic steroids have become something that you get everywhere and I see some young men go to clubs and drink all sorts of concoctions and through this singular act, they do a lot of damages to their reproductive organs.
“So it is incredible what we do to ourselves. Of course we also know that when you are overweight, there is likelihood that your sperm will also be affected negatively.”
He said therefore that there were so many things that needed to be brought into the forefront in order for men to take precautions, adding, “There are so many things going on around us that we really need to point out to people as we cannot say it is one particular factor that is responsible for this but there are lots of factors responsible.
“That is why we said that we should use the Nordica Fertility Awareness month to draw attention to this particular issue of male infertile because we want many men to become fathers and they also have to do the right things to achieve this,”
Ajayi, who said however that the male infertility issues is a big challenge in world and may get worse, added, “We don’t understand the main cause yet. Some of the things that we do are ridiculous and at the same time you can never avoid them. A thing like even toothpaste is incriminated.
“So does that mean we would not brush our mouths again? So there are so many things now that they world is confused about male factor in infertility. The truth is that we don’t really know the cause of male infertility, the only thing we can do now is to treat cases as they come.
“So we have available here all the methods available anywhere in world to help men with sperm that don’t function.â€
He reinstated further that all variants of male factor infertility are now treatable with a good chance of becoming a father after applying assisted reproductive techniques, which are all available at the Nordica Fertility Centre.
