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China's Mother Care Lowers Mortality of Women During Child Birth
North China's Hebei Province is to reduce its mortality rate of women during child birth from over 5 per ten thousand in 1998 to 4.7 per ten thousand this year, said local public health officials.
Liu Yingyu is a farmer in the Fuping County of the province. Thanks to the medical care service for confinement women, Liu Yingyu now has a lovely grandson. The baby was diagnosed transverse in his mother's uterus. The township hospital helped the baby out at the cost of 200 yuan (24 U.S. dollars), and medical staff exert regular medical examinations both on mother and baby after the operation.
Continuous medical care on confinement women and new-borns nationwide, with special attention to rural areas, in the past 50 years reduced the mortality of women during child birth from 150 per ten thousand in 1949 to the average 5.62 per ten thousand in 1998, statistics from the country's public health departments show.
Women in China's rural areas once turned to midwives in the villages for child birth. Most of the midwives were illiterate and lacking in basic delivery knowledge. They used scissors without disinfection to cut the umbilical cord, which often caused infections and even deaths of babies and mothers.
Yet, figures from national public health department indicates that the mortality rate is still higher in west China than in the eastern part due to the slower economic development and the lower educational level.
According to local public health officials, Hebei has up to now extended the specific medical care to 95 percent of its area, an 70 percent of confinement women will go to hospital for child birth. And remote and poor villages will be their focus this year.
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