“He looks at me and tells me I have PCOS. I am like me, waah, okay. He then asks how long I’ve been married and if we had been trying,” Sheila W. Two years down the line after getting married Sheila’s life turned upside down. There were a lot of moving pieces; from a sick loved one, losses, balancing work and church duties, etc. This made her and her husband oblivious that they are yet to conceive a child. A counsellor posed this question to the couple with the advice of booking a consultation with a gynaecologist.

At this point all the signs and symptoms they had previously ignored finally made sense to them. ”All this was PCOS which is polycystic ovary syndrome. It is a syndrome that affects your ovaries. The ovaries develop cysts not but many. You may ovulate but you don’t get a mature egg. Fertilisation becomes a story. Conceiving becomes another story,” She continued to share. The couple is currently receiving medical interventions and they have faith that when it’s God’s time they will have their own bundle of joy.

Well, infertility is a global issue that affects people of reproductive age, “between 48 million couples and 186 million individuals have infertility globally. Infertility is a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse.” World Health Organization (WHO).

June is the World Infertility Awareness month. In which various awareness campaigns are driven towards the general public to educate them on the various issues under the umbrella of infertility as they debunk myths and misconceptions. Some medical procedures and options can aid couples in their fertility journey.