TEHRAN (Iran News) –Barekat Charity Foundation, affiliated to Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam, has financially supported 7,000 infertile couples in rural areas to receive necessary treatments. So far, 7,000 infertile couples in disadvantaged rural areas have received full treatment free of charge through a family growth plan, which has resulted in the birth of 800 infants, IRNA quoted the head of the foundation, Amir Hossein Madani, as saying on Sunday.

The Barakat family growth plan has been implemented since 2015, which resulted in the identification of 13,270 infertile couples in rural areas, and 7,000 of whom have been introduced to medical centers and received treatment, he explained.

Intrauterine insemination (IUI), a fertility treatment that involves placing sperm inside a woman’s uterus to facilitate fertilization, In vitro fertilization (IVF), a process of fertilization where an egg is combined with sperm outside the body, in vitro (“in glass”), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), an in vitro fertilization procedure in which a single sperm cell is injected directly into the cytoplasm of an egg, as well as medications, etc. to treat infertility are offered to these couples.

Moreover, in addition to infertility treatment costs the hospital birth costs are covered by the Barekat insurance.

Infertile couples can refer to Barekat insurance agents in local centers in all provinces nationwide to use the services free of charge.

Population growth policies

Some 14 policies to support childbearing and the family were announced by the Leader in [the Iranian calendar year] 1389 (March 2014-March 2015) when he stressed that social, cultural, and economic development should be done in accordance with these general policies to support families.

The policies address the need to increase the population and the various dimensions of it, including childbearing, facilitating marriage and strengthening the family, reproductive health, promoting the Iranian-Islamic lifestyle, empowering young people, honoring the elderly, and the environment, which can lead to an increase in the quantity and quality of the population if it is timely and continuous implemented.

On March 15, the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) approved the implementation of population growth and family support plan for 7 years to change the declining trend of childbearing.

Demographic issues

The fertility rate in Iran has been declining over the past eight years, the lowest of which was related to the past [Iranian calendar] year (March 2019-March 2020) with a birth rate of 1.2, according to the data recently published by the Statistics Center.

The total fertility rate in simple terms refers to the total number of children born or likely to be born to a woman in her lifetime if she were subject to the prevailing rate of age-specific fertility in the population.

According to the data released by the National Organization for Civil Registration, the number of births registered during the [Iranian calendar] year 1390 (March 2011-March 2012) was equal to 1,382,118, which increased to 1,528,053 births in the [Iranian calendar] year 1395 (March 2016-March 2017).

However, the number of births in the whole country faced a downtrend over the past three years, as registered births decreased to 1,196,135 over the past [Iranian calendar] year; a difference of roughly over 120,000 to 16,000 per year.

Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) wrote in an article in July 2020 that the fertility rate in Iran has dropped by 70 percent over the past 30 years, which has been the highest decline in human history.

Melinda Gates, an American philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also wrote on her Twitter account that “The fastest decrease in the rate of childbearing per woman in the history of the world has happened in Iran!”

Seyed Hamed Barakati, deputy health minister for family and school population, said last year that Iran’s population growth rate has decreased to less than one percent for the first time over the past four decades.

At the beginning of the Islamic Revolution (in 1979), the country’s population grew by 2.5 percent annually, however, suddenly, population growth reached about 1.5 percent in the 1980s, he highlighted.