IVF TO THE RESCUE IN UTTAR PRADESH
Late last year, while reading a Hindi daily, Bishan Dev came across what seemed like one last chance at fatherhood. The 39-year-old sugarcane farmer in Uttar Pradesh pored over the advertisement for an IVF centre in Bareilly, about 25 km from his village. Over eight years, he and his wife Kamla had already spent over ₹3 lakh on Unani and Ayurvedic treatment options, and on travelling to multiple shrines across the country, all in the hopes of bearing a child.
A neighbour had once talked about IVF, then Bishan saw the ad, and the couple decided to give it a try. “Everyone is getting it done,” he says. “I have read all the details on the internet. I could now guide other people about the procedure.”
Kamla is now into her fourth month of pregnancy. The procedure has cost them about ₹1.25 lakh.
The Devs are among a growing community of people driving the proliferation of assisted reproduction clinics in Tier 2 cities and small towns.
Of the 18 clinics in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, 8 are in Tier 2 cities such as Meerut, Agra, Bareilly, Hapur and Muzaffarnagar, according to the National Registry of ART Clinics and Banks in India.
Factors driving this growth include rising incomes and the falling cost of the procedure, changing attitudes to fertility treatments, and a virtuous cycle where successful outcomes at regional clinics encourage others seeking children to give it a shot.
“Until 10-15 years ago, the common perception among the less educated was that IVF was some kind of operation and should be the last resort. Now I get patients who have been married for two years. They don’t want to waste time on other procedures,” says Dr Latika Agarwal, medical director of the Sarthak Test Tube Baby Centre in Bareilly, which Bishan Dev and his wife have been visiting since December. Dr Agarwal’s centre is 15 years old, and in that time she says the number of patients a month has risen from 2 to 20.
With three other IVF centres in Bareilly now, the city has become a magnet for people living in nearby towns such as Pilibhit, Badaun and Shajahanpur too. Even in areas with literacy rates far below the national average (Bareilly’s is 60% against a national average of 74%), superstition has given way to hope.
“A common notion among people used to be that a test tube baby would not be their biological child,” says Dr Agarwal. “I remember telling couples that they could get DNA tests done if they had any doubts, and I would pay for the test.”
There’s another interesting angle to the growing number of takers for IVF — delayed motherhood in working women, and the rise of nuclear families.
“Over the years, I have seen women become more career-oriented,” says Dr Neera Agarwal, consultant obstetrician and gynecologist at Bareilly’s Manas infertility centre. “This is a good trend and should be encouraged. One consequence is that they have less fertile cells by the time they are ready to start a family.”
As for the nuclear family effect, one of Dr Neera’s clients explains, “In my father and grandfather’s time, people would adopt a child from within the clan. Any decision had to be vetted by elders,” says a 36-year-old construction worker waiting his turn at Dr Neera’s clinic. “Things have changed now. I have two brothers. We all live separately. When and how I plan a family is nobody’s business.”