Poor sperm among challenges as older couples seek 2nd child

As an increasing number of couples, many past their reproductive prime, seek to have a second child under China’s new two-child policy, challenges exist including poor sperm quality, experts said.

According to official estimates, 60 percent of the couples who are newly eligible for a second baby are age 35 or older, and many of these are visiting fertility specialists for advice or assistance.

Physician Long Wen, who works for the fertility center of Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University in Hubei province, said that more than half of his male patients had “substandard” sperm quality.

Long said he usually sees about 80 visitors a day, and that his check involves sperm quantity and quality in the semen.

The revelation came as China’s State Council issued a resolution on Tuesday on implementing the universal two-child policy and improving family planning services to carry out the new law.

The Cabinet-level document aims to set up an overall support system for families with two children, as encouraged in the amendment to the nation’s Law on Population and Family Planning, which was approved by the top legislature on Dec 27.

The resolution stipulates that the past family planning policy, which limited most Chinese couples to one child, was in line with the nation’s practical situation at the time.

It calls for streamlining the administrative procedures related to reproduction and optimizing the distribution of public services and resources, such as child and maternity healthcare, child nursing, primary and middle schools and related social welfare programs.

Additionally, it urges enhancement of reproductive health services to cover the whole process of childbirth, the training of more skilled obstetricians, midwives and pediatricians, and development of new technologies.

There solution also calls for equal access to family planning services, particularly for the migrant population.

Meanwhile, Long said that less than 30 percent of the males age 40 and older who consulted him had quality sperm. Those working in the fields of information technology and the media were most susceptible to low quality, mainly due to lifestyles of little exercise, sitting for long