ReproUnion: The European reproduction project tasked with tackling infertility

Reproductive challenges affect some 25 per cent of couples in Scandinavia, according to the ReproUnion Biobank and Infertility Cohort (RUBIC), a binational clinical foundation driving advances in infertility treatment.

Copenhagen University Hospital and Skåne University Hospital are leading the initiative, projected to help 5,000 people in Denmark and Sweden who are struggling to conceive naturally over the next five to eight years. Some 2,000 people have already participated in the study.

Euronews spoke with a Danish couple, Casper Havhøj Jensen and Gry Sloth Jørgensen, who availed of RUBIC's infertility treatment. Today, they are the proud parents of a baby girl named Esther after a successful cycle of in vitro fertilisation treatment (IVF).

"I'm 38 years old but they discovered that my eggs were a bit older than they should have been, and Casper's sperm is good some months and really bad other months. We found that out after participating in several tests," Gry said.

Casper and Gry are not alone, some 17.5 per cent of adults or one in six people worldwide will be affected by infertility at some point in their lifetime, the World Health Organization reported in April of last year.

"Infertility is a disease. What we know is that approximately one-third has a female cause, one-third has a male cause, and one-third is still unknown. We know that having infertility as a male poses a risk of later cardiovascular disease. And we also have some indication in the females for the same. And that's also one of the things we want to go deeper into understanding," Henriette Svarre Nielsen, a consultant at Hvidovre Hospital near Copenhagen told Euronews. 

Approximately 7,000 children are born at this facility every year, representing some