Army probe into brutal training that risks women soldiers’ fertility
ARMY chiefs have launched a probe into whether tough military training is leaving thousands of female soldiers infertile.
They fear gruelling drills could be damaging the reproductive systems of young recruits, after evidence from the sports world showed one in four young female athletes struggles to conceive due to tough training schedules. Now concerns are rife among leading medical experts in the British Armed Forces that many of the 16,000 serving women soldiers could also be affected.
The situation has arisen less than a year after then Prime Minister David Cameron announced that women would be allowed to fight on the front line, overturning a ban on female recruits volunteering to join the cavalry, infantry and armoured corps – which involves tougher training.
But senior military figures last night warned that the Army and Ministry of Defence could be sued for huge sums of money if it transpires they knew or suspected female recruits were at risk but did not alert them to the dangers.
Colonel Tim Collins, famed for his rousing eve-of-battle speech to his men in the Iraq War of 2003 and an outspoken critic of women serving in combat, said: ‘There will be ambulance-chasing lawyers knocking the door down. I have absolutely no doubt about that.’
And Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, warned: ‘It’s grossly irresponsible of the Ministry of Defence to allow women to go through this arduous training knowing there are potentially serious effects on them.’
Experts from Army Headquarters in Andover, Hampshire, and Defence Medical Services in Lichfield, Staffordshire, have teamed up with scientists and doctors to examine the scale of the problem. They are planning a large-scale study on how Army training regimes affect the female endocrine system, which controls the production of hormones involved in reproduction.
A report in the latest Journal Of The Royal Army Medical Corps by the same team looked at whether problems in athletes could also affect female soldiers. Research leader Squadron Leader Robert Gifford said: ‘The nature of military training and possibly field exercises may contribute to greater risk of reproductive dysfunction among female military trainees. If this phenomenon was shown to exist with UK military training, this would be of significant concern.’
An MoD spokesman said: ‘The health of our people is of the utmost importance. We are undertaking research to better understand whether there are any adverse effects on fertility.
‘If there are, further work will be undertaken to identify potential mitigation strategies.’