What is infertility? Infertility is the inability to conceive a child even after years of unprotected sexual intercourse. The causes may vary from hormonal imbalance, defective reproductive system, illness, etc.
60% of infertility patients in Assam, a northeastern state in India, belong to one single community, called the Meitei. This raises the question why so much concentration of infertility cases in one group alone in the same administrative unit?
The northeastern region of India is comprised of about 7 states. In the whole of northeast region, excluding Assam, 60% of infertility patients are from the Meitei ethnic people again. This percentage may still exceed if the patients receiving treatment in Imphal are included – Imphal, the state capital of Manipur, sometimes referred to as 'Manipur valley' (as opposed to 'Manipur hills'), is the place of origin of this ethnic people.
In the nutritional domain, they fare much better than most in the northeast, thanks to their Surrogate and Internal Colonialisms both in history and at present. So the question naturally arises what could possibly be the cause behind their infertility.
In their search for the villainous culprit, some people have simply blamed the fermented fish locally called 'Ngaree'. However, it may be pointed out that this fermented fish is eaten by a whole lot of other ethnic groups all over the northeast. Therefore, the shifting of the blame on the fish is less than satisfactory. Somebody had rightly remarked, "If fermented fish can cause infertility then 90% of Meghalaya's folk will be infertile".
India's Meitei infertility seems to be higher than China's Tibetans in Qinghai and Uygurs in Xinjiang who all had a higher level of primary infertility than the Han Chinese.
References
Is fermented fish causing infertility among Northeast women?
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