Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
A discussion on reproductive health is incomplete without a mention of infertility. A large number of couples all over the world including India are infertile, i.e., they are unable to produce children in spite of unprotected sexual co-habitation. The reasons for this could be many – physical, congenital, diseases, drugs, immunological or even psychological. In India, often the female is blamed for the couple being childless, but more often than not, the problem lies in the male partner. Specialised health care units (infertility clinics, etc.) could help in diagnosis and corrective treatment of some of these disorders and enable these couples to have children. However, where such corrections are not possible, the couples could be assisted to have children through certain special techniques commonly known as assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Though options are many, all these techniques require extremely high precision handling by specialised professionals and expensive instrumentation. Therefore, these facilities are presently available only in very few centres in the country. Obviously their benefits are affordable to only a limited number of people. Emotional, religious and social factors are also deterrents in the adoption of these methods.
A couple is childless because the male partner is unable to inseminate the female. The doctor collects the semen of the husband and introduces it into the vagina of the wife. Which technique has been used?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Artificial insemination (AI)
When the male partner cannot inseminate the female, or has very low sperm counts, the semen can be collected and placed in the female tract by a doctor. Fertilisation then takes place inside the female body. The general name for this is artificial insemination; when the semen is placed in the uterus, it is called intra-uterine insemination.
Option (1) Intra-uterine insemination (IUI) — Incorrect. IUI is the form of artificial insemination in which the semen is placed in the uterus. In this case the doctor introduces it into the vagina, so the name IUI does not apply.
Option (2) Gamete intra fallopian transfer (GIFT) — Incorrect. In GIFT an ovum from a donor is placed in the fallopian tube of another female who cannot produce one but can support fertilisation and development. Here the problem lies with the male, and no ovum is transferred.
Option (3) Artificial insemination (AI) — Correct. In AI the semen of the husband or of a healthy donor is introduced artificially into the vagina or the uterus. It corrects infertility due to the inability of the male partner to inseminate the female, which is the problem here, and the semen is placed in the vagina.
Option (4) Intra uterine transfer (IUT) — Incorrect. IUT places an embryo with more than 8 blastomeres, formed in the laboratory, into the uterus. In this case only semen is introduced and no embryo is transferred.
NCERT Extract:
Infertility – “Infertility cases either due to inability of the male partner to inseminate the female or due to very low sperm counts in the ejaculates, could be corrected by artificial insemination (AI) technique. In this technique, the semen collected either from the husband or a healthy donor is artificially introduced either into the vagina or into the uterus (IUI – intra-uterine insemination) of the female.”