A record 56,979 children were born from in vitro fertilization in Japan in 2018 according to data from the Japanese Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
This is a record high for the second year in a row, and means one in 15 births resulted from IVF.
Since the first such birth in Japan in 1983 there have been about 650,000 children born from IVF.
IVF is a fertility treatment in which a woman's egg is fertilized by a man's sperm outside the body before being implanted into the uterus.
As people marry later in life, the age at which they consider having children has also increased. The number of couples struggling with infertility has led to an increase in the number of IVF treatments, which have reached a record 454,893.
IVF is not covered by public health insurance and costs hundreds of thousands of yen each time. Although the central government has a subsidy system, many delay or give up on treatment due to the considerable out-of-pocket expenses.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has proposed having insurance cover infertility treatments as a way of fighting the declining birthrate, and the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is studying the matter.
--Tripled from 15 years ago
Couples whose infertility does not have a specified cause typically start with a therapy called the "timing method," which is covered by health insurance. In this method, a doctor provides guidance by using ultrasound to predict when it will be easiest to get pregnant.
Any subsequent treatments are not covered by insurance. The next step is artificial insemination, in which concentrated sperm is injected into the uterus.
If this still does not result in a pregnancy, couples can try IVF.
The first IVF birth in Japan was at Tohoku University in 1983. In that method, eggs taken out of the ovaries were fertilized naturally by mixing them with sperm.
In the 1990s, a technique was developed in which a single sperm is injected into an egg using a needle under a microscope.
Pregnancy and delivery rates with IVF decline as women age. Younger women, who have higher success rates, are often less financially stable and hesitate to go ahead with the expensive procedure.
"The government is considering reducing the economic burden of infertility treatments, but I hope they will provide generous support to younger people struggling with infertility and design a system that will allow them to go ahead with treatment as soon as possible," said Saitama Medical University Prof. Osamu Ishihara, who compiled the society's data.
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