Introduction:
Infertility in marriage is a widespread, and not only medical, but also a social problem.

Objective:
The purpose of study was verification of whether or not, according to the definition by the WHO, infertility is approached as a disease in the relevant literature, and the determination of premises to view infertility in that way.

Material and Methods:
In order to collect material for the study, medical university databases: PubMed, MEDLINE and Social Care Online data, were searched for the following key notions: infertility, consequences of infertility, quality of life of infertile individuals, disease, and chronic disease. The search was limited to literature in Polish and English published in 1994-2010. Subsequently, 48 reports were selected, 27 of which were finally used for the presented study. In addition, 6 reports were used which were not included in the above-mentioned databases, but found in private database of other researchers. Finally, 33 reports were analyzed.

Results:
The WHO and some researchers support the thesis that infertility is a disease of a ‘social’ character. However, there are numerous opposing approaches stating that infertility cannot be considered as a disease, because it is not associated with pain, not life threatening and it does concern a single individual. The review of literature showed a wide diversity of opinions among the researchers which allowed the drawing of some conclusions.

Conclusions:
Contemporary literature does not provide an explicit definition of marriage infertility as a disease, although there are numerous arguments for approaching it as such.