She took over as the president of ISAR from Dr Narendra Malhotra, and assured her esteemed colleagues of her commitment to the worthy cause of women’s reproductive rights in India in her Presidential address, by dedicating 2017 as ISAR’s Year of Empowerment: through Education, Ethics and Empathy.
Over her several decades of experience in the field, Dr Shah has had to opportunity to work with and help women from all walks of life, and from all parts of the country, and has developed a deep empathy for the plight of lakhs of women in India who do not have access to reproductive healthcare.
“India has a strange problem. On the one hand, it has the burden of high fertility which the government is addressing through family planning programs, and on the other hand, there is the problem of childlessness, with over 7 % of currently married women being childless,” she explained. And as an infertility expert, Dr Shah stressed the point that infertility treatment is a very necessary component of women’s mental and physical health, especially considering the social pressure that women who are unable to conceive or have children face both in rural and urban India.
Apart from this, they battle many other demons, such as the high cost of the treatment, the lack of access to quality infertility treatments in rural areas, the lack of insurance coverage for infertility treatments etc. Adding to this stress is the fact that the woman, who ultimately has to get pregnant, has to go through repeated examinations, procedures and maybe surgeries, entailing a lot of physical discomfort and health issues.