"Vietnam has made significant strides in infertility treatment in the last 14 years" since the country's first Assisted Reproductive Technology centre was set up at the HCM City-based Tu Du Hospital in 1997, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Viet Tien said.

Diagnosis and treatment of infertility had not developed in Vietnam before 1997.

All 14 ART centres in the country now adopted advanced technologies that helped increase the success rate of in-vitro fertilisation, including assisted hatching, in-vitro maturation and intracytoplasmic sperm injection.

A draft national population and reproductive health programme for 2011-20 targeted reducing infertility by 50 percent.

Some 10-15 percent of the child-bearing population was infertile. The sterility rate was 40 per cent each for husbands and wives while in 10 percent of the cases, both were.

Globally, the infertility rate was 14 to 20 percent.