Who. Young people between 20 and 40 years old, in good health, are called to donate their semen due to the shortage in the Asian country. That. She urgently needs babies because she is falling into a demographic recession. Because. The current birth rate -6.77 per 1,000- is the lowest since records began in 1949. When. As a result of the pandemic, with three years of closed campuses, students stopped donating.
“Men are being sought between the ages of 20 and 40, with a minimum height of 1.70 meters, clean habits, no infectious or genetic diseases, no hair loss, and must have or be pursuing a university degree.”
Young, hairy and educated. Essential requirements for the Beijing clinic that published this announcement on social networks a few days ago in search of sperm donors. Whoever passes the filter and makes up to 10 donations will receive 5,000 yuan, which in exchange is around 660 euros.
Many advertisements like this have been running since the beginning of the year throughout China. From Shaanxi in the northwest to Yunnan in the south. All the provinces are looking for donors because the sperm banks are dry. The fault lies with the pandemic, which locked up students, who are the main donors, on campus for almost three years.
The problem is that the sperm shortage has come at the worst possible time: China, home to more than 1.4 billion people, badly needs many more babies because the population is shrinking. It already fell into a historic demographic recession last year, with the birth rate plummeting to 6.77 births per 1,000 people, the lowest since records began in 1949. Among the many and varied family planning policies being moving to encourage pregnancies, is the financing of fertility treatments. But this push from the ruling Communist Party, very nervous about the population drop, is of no use if the essential raw material to begin the process is scarce.
The debate on the need to fill the sperm banks has even reached social networks after some cities began a kind of competition to see who paid the most money to attract donors. In southern Kunming, for example, this year the payment has been raised to more than 300 euros. Although the highest subsidy, around 1,000 euros, is provided by Shanghai.
Added to the lack of donors is the low quality. This is what an article in a medical journal from the central province of Hubei stated in February: “Because the sperm must be stored at ultra-low temperatures, it has to meet high requirements and only 20% of the volunteers achieve the qualification. Most have stressful lives.”
There are studies carried out by Chinese researchers that suggest that semen quality among Chinese young men has decreased, especially in terms of sperm concentration. This pointed out a study published before the pandemic in the journal Human Reproduction Update: more than 70,000 samples from 30,636 healthy Chinese men were evaluated and analyzed between 2001 and 2016. The authors found that the rate of qualified donors fell from 55.78% in 2001 to 17.8% in 2016. The percentage of sperm with normal morphology decreased from 31.8% to 10.8% during the same period.
Ayo Wahlberg, professor of anthropology at the University of Copenhagen, pointed out this week in a column in the Chinese newspaper Sixth Tone that donors also face non-existent barriers in the West: the requirement of 60 million sperm per milliliter is four times higher. that the WHO criteria and the use of donated sperm is limited to married couples.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project