Sperm banks don't meet rising demand

A doctor takes out a tube of frozen sperm from liquid nitrogen at minus 190 degrees Celsius in Shanghai Human Sperm Bank at Renji Hospital. (Photo: Shanghai Daily)

Philip Luo has been looking into "reproductive insurance" — to freeze his sperm and store it in the sperm bank in case anything happens to him before he wants children.

Last October, the 27-year-old chemist was found to have something suspicious with his prostate during an annual medical check.

"Luckily, I did some further check-up and it was nothing," he recalls. "But the doctor said the worst could have been prostate cancer. My parents, especially my mom, were utterly shocked and scared. My mom has been pushing me to get a girlfriend and get married even more since then."

An only child, Luo had not thought about his own child but was confronted with the simple question now, "What if I get a disease like that before I get married and have a child?"

The Shanghai Human Sperm Bank at Renji Hospital, the only one in town, confirmed a rapid increase in the number of people, like Luo, who are saving sperm as a kind of insurance.

Hospital officials would not quantify the increase, but the bank now has nearly 1,500 samples from people — some as young as 17 — who have saved for future use, since the bank's founding in 2003. A total of 53 babies have been born from frozen sperm, all healthy. The oldest is now 10 years old.

The bank's website lists unhealthy lifestyle — environmental pollution and stress from work and society — along with a higher incidence of severe diseases like cancer, as the major killers of male reproductive ability. Azoospermia, absence of motile sperm, and oligozoospermia, low sperm count, are the major problems among infertile men.

The site urges men who want to postpone being a parent, or are employed in high-risk positions, or are facing radiation therapy, chemotherapy or surgery to freeze sperms now. The cost for storage is 2 yuan (32 US cents) a day, just under US$120 for a year.

In addition to reproductive insurance for those like Luo, the bank's main purpose is to use donated sperm to help infertile families.

About 10 percent of Shanghai couples are infertile, and the number is increasing. About 10 percent of these couples turn to the sperm bank for help. They often need to wait for months and are not given choices of donor characteristics.

In China, the 2010 infertility rate was put at 10 to 15 percent of couples, up from 8 to 10 percent a decade earlier. To use the sperm bank, couples must show a marriage certificate and proof of infertility, among other papers required by the Ministry of Health.