Karen Breeck: New WHO Guidelines Emphasize Fertility Education for All
Karen Breeck, Public Speaker MD Potentials LTD, shared a post on LinkedIn։
“New guidance from the World Health Organization is a reminder that fertility is not just a personal issue – it’s also a workplace and policy issue many Canadians don’t realize they’ll face.
Key points everyone should know:
Infertility affects about 1 in 6 people.
- Age remains the strongest fertility predictor, but lifestyle and access to health care matter too, including smoking, alcohol use, weight extremes, and untreated infections.
- Workplace and environmental exposures may also affect fertility. For women working in environments involving fuel, chemicals, radiation, shift work, chronic stress, and other reproductive hazards common in defence, aviation, firefighting, and other non-traditional occupations, these exposures matter.
- WHO now recommends routine fertility education, including awareness of age-related fertility decline and ways to reduce risk. Fertility care should be part of women’s primary health care, not a luxury add-on.
For women serving in defence and similar careers who often delay family planning to meet operational or career demands – sometimes while concurrently facing diverse reproductive hazard exposures – doctors and employers need to discuss their fertility preservation and egg banking options early in these women’s careers.
Bottom line: If Canada wants more women serving in defence and other non-traditional fields, we need better research and clearer information about reproductive hazards.
Women deserve a real choice between career and family, and that requires conversations – and options – to be offered early, honestly, and routinely.
Offering egg banking as an employee benefit in higher-risk workplaces should be part of that solution.”
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