Childbirth deaths' dramatic decline
Source: Xinhua |
March 9, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
THE first time she got pregnant, in 2004, Yang Lanyan panicked when her period stopped for two months, because she had no idea what it meant.
"I was too shy to tell my mother-in-law," says Yang, a farmer in Pailou Village, in the relatively underdeveloped Huishui County of southwest China's Guizhou Province, home to Buyi and Miao ethnic minority people.
Instead, she took a friend's advice and bought a pregnancy test paper in town. She followed the instructions and the test was positive.
Poor knowledge of reproductive health and the low hospital delivery rate in the countryside used to pose grave health risks to Chinese rural women.
In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, 15 in every 1,000 women died in childbirth, according to a progress report by the Ministry of Health.
Modern China's maternal mortality ratio has fallen from 1,500 per 100,000 then to 31.9 per 100,000 in 2009, according to statistics of the health ministry.
Health Minister Chen Zhu said in September 2009, China's maternal mortality ratio was among the lowest in the developing world.
Wang Linhong, vice director of National Center for Women and Children's Health, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, believes the decline in childbirth related deaths and greater access to maternal health care is the greatest-ever achievement in improving Chinese women's health.
One of the main reasons behind the progress is the policy of free or subsidized hospital delivery to rural women and corresponding improvements in maternal health care.
Under the policy, rural women receive benefits if they give birth in hospital, and those women who join the new rural corporative medical care system have medical expenses almost entirely reimbursed.
This policy has been carried out since 2005. A similar policy aimed at reducing maternal mortality and eliminating neonatal tetanus was tried out previously in certain areas.
Yang Fang, the head of a township-level clinic in Huishui County, says, "Women know perfectly that hospital births are safe and healthy, but they couldn't afford it in the past. Now with insurance or government subsidies, most would go to hospital to give birth."
"I was too shy to tell my mother-in-law," says Yang, a farmer in Pailou Village, in the relatively underdeveloped Huishui County of southwest China's Guizhou Province, home to Buyi and Miao ethnic minority people.
Instead, she took a friend's advice and bought a pregnancy test paper in town. She followed the instructions and the test was positive.
Poor knowledge of reproductive health and the low hospital delivery rate in the countryside used to pose grave health risks to Chinese rural women.
In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, 15 in every 1,000 women died in childbirth, according to a progress report by the Ministry of Health.
Modern China's maternal mortality ratio has fallen from 1,500 per 100,000 then to 31.9 per 100,000 in 2009, according to statistics of the health ministry.
Health Minister Chen Zhu said in September 2009, China's maternal mortality ratio was among the lowest in the developing world.
Wang Linhong, vice director of National Center for Women and Children's Health, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, believes the decline in childbirth related deaths and greater access to maternal health care is the greatest-ever achievement in improving Chinese women's health.
One of the main reasons behind the progress is the policy of free or subsidized hospital delivery to rural women and corresponding improvements in maternal health care.
Under the policy, rural women receive benefits if they give birth in hospital, and those women who join the new rural corporative medical care system have medical expenses almost entirely reimbursed.
This policy has been carried out since 2005. A similar policy aimed at reducing maternal mortality and eliminating neonatal tetanus was tried out previously in certain areas.
Yang Fang, the head of a township-level clinic in Huishui County, says, "Women know perfectly that hospital births are safe and healthy, but they couldn't afford it in the past. Now with insurance or government subsidies, most would go to hospital to give birth."
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