VietNamNet
Bridge – A man brought his wife to many hospitals over the past 13 years to
cure infertility because he and his wife didn’t know that she had a coil. This
is the case of a farmer family in Ha Nam,
a northern province of Vietnam.

The couple got married 13 years ago. After
ten months, they had their first daughter. The couple planed to have the second
child when the first child goes to school. But their plan failed because the
wife could not get pregnant.

Afraid of carrying a bad reputation, the
couple secretly visited many doctors to cure the wife’s infertility. They both
took a lot of medicine and spent a lot of money over the past 13 years but it
all was hopeless.

Only in late 2010 when the woman got a scan
at an obstetric hospital did doctors discover that she had a coil.

At that time, the couple realized that the
woman was put in a coil by a local health worker 13 years ago in a “population
– family planning” campaign. The health worker put in the coil but she didn’t
tell the woman about it.

After the coil was removed, the woman was
immediately pregnant.

A retired commune-level health worker said
that before the 1990s, men were encouraged to be sterile, with 100kg of rice as
bonus. “There are many half-laugh, half-crying stories about the “family
planning” campaign in this period but thanks to the campaign, population growth
was curbed,” he said.

Thai Binh