One in six people worldwide affected by infertility, WHO reports

Dr Pascale Allotey, director of sexual and reproductive health and research at the WHO, said solutions such as in-vitro fertilisation (pictured) were ‘all too often a medical poverty trap’. Photograph: Mike Kiev/Alamy

One in six people worldwide are affected by infertility, according to a report that lays bare the scale of the problem.

About 17.5% of the global adult population – roughly one in six – will experience infertility at some point in their lifetime, the 98-page report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The figures are its first estimates of infertility prevalence in more than a decade.