Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Despite backlash, campaign on fertility issues to continue run

SINGAPORE — A fertility awareness campaign that drew flak last year will run again this year, featuring even more fertility health checks for interested couples than in its first run.

SINGAPORE — A fertility awareness campaign that drew flak last year will run again this year, featuring even more fertility health checks for interested couples than in its first run.

Organised by voluntary welfare organisation I Love Children (ILC), the maiden edition of the campaign last year featured advertisements at MRT stations showing cartoon sperm and eggs alongside slogans providing information on fertility.

The campaign sparked criticism from netizens and the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) for allegedly “scare-mongering” and “intrusive badgering”.

Some had described the campaign as “offensive and distasteful”, while others called it “patronising and condescending towards all women”.

This year’s campaign will also feature similarly colourful visuals in train cabins and on buses. A series of roadshows will also be held next month at shopping malls, at which doctors and fertility experts will give talks on a range of topics, such as bedroom intimacy and in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

For this year’s campaign, the number of free fertility health checks on offer — conducted by Thomson Fertility Centre and Mount Elizabeth Hospital — will triple from last year’s, to 450.

Commenting on the debate surrounding last year’s campaign, ILC president Joni Ong told TODAY: “Whether it is positive or negative publicity, it is good that people start talking (about the issue). But we recognise that (whether to) have babies is a personal choice, and (the campaign’s) target audience is people who already want to have babies.” For those who hope to conceive, work can wait, she said. “But our bodies can’t. The longer one waits (to get checked), the more psychological and emotional pain (one may have to bear),” she added.

Speaking at a panel launching the campaign on Monday (June 26), IVF clinician Dr Loh Seong Feei, who is medical director of the Thomson Fertility Centre, said the authorities “can be more proactive” in their policies so as to boost the fertility rate here, which dipped to 1.2 last year.

For instance, government co-funding for assisted reproduction technology treatments such as IVF can be extended to private hospitals to reduce the patient load at public hospitals and allow more to seek such treatment.

Legalising egg freezing may also give women who are presently single a greater shot at conceiving if they get married later, said Dr Loh.

In Singapore, only women with medical needs — such as cancer patients who have to undergo chemotherapy that will adversely affect their fertility — are allowed to freeze their eggs. A growing number of single Singaporean women are heading to Malaysia, Thailand and Australia to preserve their fertility.

He added: “Infertility may be a personal issue, but people facing this problem can also rally together, form a support group as they do in other countries, to push for more.”

Referring to a genetic test to evaluate an embryo’s health, Mount Elizabeth Hospital’s fertility specialist Dr Suresh Nair said: “Our government is doing its best to get pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) to the restructured hospitals, then to the private hospitals. This has already been done mainstream in many other countries ... Many countries in the world are proving that PGS is a safe technology.”

Similar to egg freezing, some patients have been advised to head abroad for PGS to improve their pregnancy chances as the technique is currently unavailable in most hospitals here.

Last year, the Health Ministry announced that it would be embarking on a clinical review of PGS and its ethical implications.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.