Jalandhar: Infertility can be a challenge for a family, but for active/ duty service members, there are additional set of obstacles. They have to face separation from families due to postings across the country, a general exposure to hostile environment and high altitude areas and stress. Infertility was not discussed in the past as it was perceived to be a taboo but now with better education, more and more families are coming forward. Consequently, the clientele load on existing Assisted Reproductive Technology Centers of the Armed Forces has increased.
A very thoughtful initiative was taken up by the Western Command to open one more Assisted Reproductive Technology Center at Jalandhar in 2019. The project was planned in two phases. In the first phase, a Level One Assisted Reproductive Technology Centre was opened in 2019. Once the Level One Centre was fully functional, it was upgraded to a Level Three Centre on 31 March 2021. The Military Hospital Jalandhar Assisted Reproductive Technology Centre is a state-of-art facility handling clientele from entire Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.
An estimated 5100 patients have been attended to in the Out-patient clinic. 60 IVF case (45% success rate) have been done so far. This Centre offers couple counseling, semen analysis, IUI, 3-D colour Doppler and follicular monitoring, Sonosalpingography (SSG), surgical sperm retrieval, gamete freezing, embryo and blastocyst culture, micro manipulation of gametes, embryo transfer and embryo freezing. This Assisted Reproductive Technology Centre of Vajra Corps has brought happiness to the lives of a large number of couples of the Armed Forces and has proven to be a great morale booster.
