All three sperm banks in Vietnam are seriously short of sperm to battle infertility.

The latest survey of sperm of men in Vietnam shows that 24% of men have weak, little or deformed sperm and 10.1% don’t have any.

Hospitals need sperm to help couples have children. There are three hospitals in Vietnam that have sperm banks: the Central Obstetrics Hospital, Tu Du Hospital and Embryo Technology Centre under the Army Medical Institute. All of them say they are short of sperm.

A man in Go Vap district, HCM City, said he searched on the Internet for a long time to find a man who agreed to donate sperm. However, the donor said he was very poor and asked for VND6 million.

To donate sperm, a person must first pass a blood test, then a sperm test. If the sperm is good, the donor returns to the hospital again to give sperm and then comes back two times more to donate two other samples of sperm. During the intervals between donations, a donor must not have sex to ensure the quality of sperm. Three months after donating the last sample of sperm, the donor must return to the hospital once more to test for infectious diseases. If he is healthy, his sperm are preserved in the sperm bank for use.

At HCM City-based Tu Du Hospital, sperm donors must be between 20 and 55 years old, have good health, and have graduated from high school at least. Donors are allowed to give sperm just once.

Additionally, some sperm donors wonder about their blood line because they are not told where their sperm goes. Because of this and difficulties in collecting sperm, sperm banks lack sperm donors.

Tu Du Hospital has applied a measure: when one uses sperm from the hospital’s sperm bank, he must find a sperm donor as compensation. Because of this, Tu Du hospital’s sperm bank has given 220 sperm samples to couples. The bank has received 50-60 other applications for sperm but it won’t give anything to the couples because they have not yet found sperm donors.

In Hanoi, Dr. Nguyen Viet Tien, Director of the Central Obstetrics Hospital, said men who don’t have sperm account for 10% of the total infertility cases at the hospital.

The hospitals’ sperm bank can satisfy the need of only 6-7% of the couples that need sperm. Some infertile couples have to wait for years for help.

(Source: PN)

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