Newsday continues its look into low fertility rates in Trinidad and Tobago with fertility expert Dr Catherine Minto-Bain. The previous article published on May 13 gives an overview and thoughts by gynaecologist Dr Sherene Kalloo.

Minto-Bain's interview raised the need for examination and urgent action into the environmental causes of infertility in the country and region.

Even as a Sahara dust obscured TT’s sky on May 7, fertility and reproductive specialist Dr Catherine Minto-Bain worried about how the poor air quality would affect those trying to have children.

Often discussions about infertility and low fertility rates tend to be female-skewed and personal, the medical director at the TT IVF and Fertility Centre said there are growing environmental and social issues to consider.

In a phone interview about TT’s low fertility rate, Minto-Bain said, “It is something that is now beginning to concern governments because they are beginning to see the economic impact of having less children being born in your country.”

While TT was not unusual, and the issue has been around for more than 20 years, the fertility rate was dropping again.

“We are well below replacement rate now. So the average woman in TT’s fertility rate is 1.6. So if a woman is not having two children, she is not replacing the population,” she said.

At the clinic, Minto-Bain and other staff often saw two things in the patient population coming to them: people coming at a later age and those who did want children at all.

[caption id="attachment_1083189" align="alignnone" width="684"] Dr Catherine Minto-Bain, medical director and fertility specialist, TTIVF & Fertility Centre. Bain want more governmental emphasis on environmental problems and infertility. -[/caption]

She also runs the Caribbean Egg Bank and for the last 20 years has had eggs donated by “young, healthy women” in their early 20s and mid-20s.

“I have been doing this now for 15 years and when you talk to these eggs donors, many more of them are coming through saying, ‘I am not going to have children.’

“And that is not something we really saw even very much say five years ago and I can’t say I heard it ten years ago.”

She said ten years ago people would have come in saying they completed their family and would like to help someone else.

The reasons for this were quite varied.

“The reasons are: ‘I’d like to travel,’ ‘I’m not sure that I want to choose a partner for life,’ ‘I’m worried about the climate, the environment.’”

Other reasons were people did not like how they were parented and were uncertain about being good parents themselves.

“The Gen Z generation (people born from 1997-2011) have a very different outlook on having children…,” she said.

Minto-Bain said some women had fertility treatments, wanted another baby but could not afford childcare or take more time off of work.

She said there were a lot of financial considerations and many of the clinic’s patients were choosing to only have one child, Minto-Bain added. There was a 2011 TTIVF study