Infertility Causes

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Infertility is a major obstacle to good health and peaceful co-existence in many homes especially in developing countries. In spite of this, the treatment of infertility has not received adequate and comprehensive attention. Most of the discussions have centred on fertility reduction. Serious attempt has not been made to address treatment of infertility according taxonomy of causes of infertility. This why infertility treatments, even simple ones such as treatment of STIs (that cause infertility), are therefore not made available to individuals in developing countries. However, it has been established that the treatment of infertility depends on the cause. Therefore, this paper is aimed at identifying and classifying the causes of infertility…show more content…
Within the Igbo culture, there are some basic sacred and secular beliefs which provided meaning to causes of disease such as infertility. So, the causes of infertility are better understood within the context of the people concerned (Jegede, 1998). Similar view had earlier been posited by Geertz (1970), when he suggested that the people’s view helps to develop knowledge and attitude of the people towards life. As a result of this, there is an attempt here to synchronize the views of the traditional infertility healers (TIHs) with those of the hospital infertility healers (HIHs). In the eyes of the TIHs, there are some causes of infertility that are peculiar to female or male and there are others that can affect both. Those causes that are peculiar to female include fibroid (Ehe Afo), black menstruation, irregular menstruation, abortion, spiritual husband (di-uwa), hot womb and sperm mixtures. On the other hand, causes of male infertility according to the traditional view are spiritual wife (nwunye –uwa), epilepsy, hot waist, consistent driving of long distant trucks, consistent sexual intercourse with menstruating women, swollen testicle (Ibi), lack of circumcision and dysentery (afo-obara). There are other causes of infertility that are common to both male and female. They are destruction of children’s toy, curses, breaching of cultural taboos, mystical attack be enemies, worms, natural defects, accidents and sexually transmitted disease (fig.

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