With an aim to offer complete fertility solutions to the patients suffering from infertility, Manipal Healthcare is planning to launch a chain of fertility clinics across India in the next 5 years.
“We are planning to expand our base in the field of fertility healthcare solutions and have plans to launch more than 40 fertility clinics across the country in the next 5 years,” informed Dr Sandeep Sharma, managing director and chief executive officer, Manipal Fertility Healthcare.
As part of this initiative, recently the Manipal Hospitals established a world class fertility center at Annapoorna Nilaya in Ongle district in Andhra Pradesh. Currently the hospital group runs 9 state-of-the art fertility centers across 5 states. Further expanding its base, Manipal Hospital is planning to invest Rs. 100 crores, for establishing fertility centers in different states across India and abroad. “Our strategy is to expand both in Brownfield and Greenfield modes of growth. Our aim is offer the highest quality assisted reproductive services while addressing fertility and conception-related issues in couples as also looking at Men’s Sexual health as a key focus area,” revealed Dr. Sandeep.
Latest studies on infertility reveal that 10 per cent of the general population suffers from some form of infertility. Given that India has a population of over 1.2 billion, the number of Indians suffering from infertility is huge. According to reports more than 46 per cent of the couples coming to infertility clinics belonged to the prime reproductive age group of 31 to 40 years. Of them, 49 per cent had already undergone IVF or in vitro fertilization, a treatment for infertility.
When compared globally, India has four times as many infertility patients compared to the United States and infertility is on the rise and may reach almost 50 per cent, in the near future. This problem is mainly attributed to lifestyle changes, high stress levels, lack of physical exercise, and environmental pollution to name a few.
Having understood the gravity of the problem, Manipal Fertility has pioneered new treatment options for men with very poor or zero sperm count and women with repeated pregnancy loss and multiple failures in assisted reproductive techniques. This is being achieved by introducing cutting edge technologies in the form of flow cytometric sperm and DNA analysis, advanced fertilization ability tests, embryo quality improvement tools like embryoscope and pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS) and implantation window assessment technologies. Manipal Fertility has also focused on Men’s health by pro-actively providing solutions for erectile dysfunction with shockwave and stem cell therapy.