2024-01-31 16:00:08
How to do prevention on the subject of infertility? The terrain is slippery and the question is complex, as it touches on the intimate. The executive nevertheless took up the issue, at a time when 3 million people are affected in France. In the wake of the announcement made by Emmanuel Macron, on January 16, of a plan against this “scourge” qualified for “taboo of the century”, a commitment was made to introduce consultations on infertility at age 25, with a gynecological examination offered to women and a spermogram for men. Lever of a “demographic rearmament” called for by the President of the Republic, the measure nonetheless aroused strong reactions among doctors: detecting fertility or infertility at this age, with this type of examination and outside of a parental project, has little meaning for them.
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The idea is to rely on “prevention assessments”, these meetings promised by the government at key ages of life, including the 18-25 age group, for which deployment is expected soon. The occasion of ” to raise awareness “ and of “raise awareness further upstream” of these issues, we specify at the Elysée, ensuring that it will not be an obligation.
The spotlight may well be welcomed on this “public health issue”, “public authorities’ blind spot”as highlighted in the report submitted in 2022 by Professor Samir Hamamah, incomprehension dominates. “It’s way too early. This meeting at 25 makes no sense, we don’t understand where it comes from”, reacts Mr. Hamamah, head of the reproductive biology department at the Montpellier university hospital center. In his report, which was to inspire “a major national strategy” on infertility, which has until now remained a dead letter, the proposal for a consultation at 29 years old was defended, which is close to the average age of childbirth – 31 years old – and the same as that opening the right to “fertility preservation” among women, since the 2021 bioethics law.
Exams without predictive value
Intervening in this way at an age where « chances » to get pregnant are at their « maximum » also raises questions. “A year, two years later, your reproductive health may have taken a hit, but you will tell yourself that everything is fine”, continues the doctor. And these two examinations, alone, have no value of « complete balance sheet », he emphasizes. They are also, for some, extremely variable: the results of a spermogram can thus “collapse” just three months apart.
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