Sperm banks struggle to attract donors
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E-mail Xinhua, June 30, 2013
"It feels weird to know that someone you meet on the street someday could be your child," said "Zhou Zheng," a sperm donor from north China's Hebei Province, who has complicated feelings about the donation he made a decade ago.
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A sperm bank in China's Sha'anxi Province [Photo/Chinanews.com] |
Back then, Zhou was a college student who decided to donate his sperm out of compassion for reproductively challenged couples. But the thought of being the biological father of a child he doesn't know scared him away from ever doing it again.
According to Chinese law, sperm donated by one person can be used to impregnate up to five women. This means that Zhou, who is married with his own child, could actually have as many as six offspring.
"Knowing I might have five other kids out there really freaks me out," he said.
Sperm banks are dealing with a worsening shortage of healthy sperm, despite repeated efforts to recruit more donors.
Almost three decades after China opened its first sperm bank in central China's Hunan Province, the Hebei Human Sperm Bank has become the latest fertility institution in China to report a shortage of qualified sperm.
According to the sperm bank's director Zhao Bangrong, there are currently 700 couples waiting for sperm, but the bank only had 200 volunteer donors in the first six months of the year, compared to 650 volunteers during the same period last year.
Not all volunteers can donate. Only 20 percent can meet the requirements set by health authorities to ensure their sperm is of the highest quality, according to Zhao.
People with hereditary diseases or who have been exposed to radioactivity, as well as those who have a history of heavy smoking or drinking, are not permitted to donate. There are also requirements for active sperm counts in semen samples.
"People are incorrectly assuming that being disqualified for donation means you have reproductive problems," Zhao said, adding that such fears have driven potential donors even further away.
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