SAFAR · South Asian Fertility & Reproductive health
Safar means journey. And no one should walk this one alone.
A social-first awareness campaign on fertility and reproductive health, from an NHS-trained GP — built with lived-experience voices, advocates and clinicians from across our communities.
Your journey is not a secret to be kept.
In many South Asian families, fertility is spoken about only in whispers — if at all. When a couple struggles, the questions land on her first, and hardest. Male-factor infertility, behind roughly half of all cases, is barely mentioned. The silence protects no one. It just means people walk the hardest road of their lives alone.
And 'South Asian' is not one story. Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan — Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain and more. Each community, faith and generation carries fertility differently: different pressures, different beliefs, different silences. SAFAR breaks down the monolith, because awareness that flattens us helps no one.
SAFAR is starting now. It is led on social media and built with people who have lived this — alongside advocates already doing the work, and clinicians with expertise in reproductive, hormonal and lifestyle health, some with a personal lens of their own. If you want to walk with us, join below.
The five threads of SAFAR
One name. Five promises.
Stigma reduction
Naming the silence, the guilt, and the burden that falls hardest on women — so it can finally start to lift.
Access to evidence-based facts
Clear, clinical myth-busting on IVF, egg freezing and male-factor infertility. Facts, said kindly.
Family & community dynamics
Parental pressure, joint-family boundaries, faith, culture across generations, and grief — the real context our journeys happen in.
Advocacy & patient empowerment
Walking into every appointment knowing what to ask — and knowing you are allowed to ask it.
Resources & support networks
Support that understands where you come from. We already maintain a culturally-vetted whole-life directory — start there.
Browse the support directory
The people
The voices of SAFAR
Real people, not stock photos: lived-experience voices, advocates already doing the work, and clinicians — some carrying a personal story of their own. More voices join as the journey grows.
Kreena Dhiman
Breast cancer at 33 took her fertility. She built a family of four children across two surrogacy journeys, and spoke openly so no other South Asian woman would feel as alone as she once had.
Kreena's story
Seetal Savla
Six years, four IVF cycles, a donor egg, a miscarriage, and then a daughter conceived naturally. She writes and speaks about the fears South Asian families carry through fertility treatment, so no one has to carry them in silence.
Full story coming soon
Lived-experience advocates · The Himmat Collective
Vik and Sarina Dosanjh
Three miscarriages, a failed IVF cycle, and a culture that calls it bad luck. They decided baby loss and infertility would not be things South Asian couples grieve in silence.
Vik and Sarina's story
GP · Men's health and fertility
Dr Anand Patel
Many South Asian men are raised to keep the body below the waist private, and that silence can quietly cost them their health. Dr Anand has built a whole career making the conversation feel ordinary.
Anand's story
Dr Farah Ahmed
Bringing GP expertise in women's health and hormones to break the silence around South Asian women's health.
Full story coming soon
Clinical epidemiologist · Health-equity researcher
Dr Gayathri Delanerolle
Building the clinical research and evidence that make women's pain impossible to dismiss.
Full story coming soon
Dr Sana Javed
Opening up the conversation we are not having about South Asian menopause health, and breaking the silence for the women living through it.
Full story coming soon
Dr Kurren Sandhu
Burnt out in training, rebuilt through lifestyle medicine, now helping others do the same.
Read his storyThe journey is documented on Instagram first.
Myth-busting, real stories and clinician answers — follow along, save what resonates, and share it with the person who needs it.
@appyandyaarThe questions we never ask out loud
Ask anonymously
The questions no one asks out loud are the ones this campaign exists for. No name, no email — we cannot see who you are, and we cannot reply to you personally. Selected questions are answered, anonymised, by clinicians in campaign content.
This is not medical advice. If you need help now, call NHS 111, or 999 in an emergency, or speak to your GP.
Delivered in partnership with HHEI CIC, a multi-disciplinary hormonal health equity initiative (VCSE).