Northwest China's Qinghai Province has offered peasant and herder women a medicare scheme to exempt their medical expenses at childbirth.

As one of the first beneficiaries, Zhoema, a herder's wife in Guinan county, paid 50 yuan (US$ 6) last year to be registered to the medicare program. The family paid virtually nothing for the midwifery, medicine and basic vaccination when Zhoema's baby was born last week at a local hospital in Senduo village.

"We couldn't have afforded childbirth at a hospital, if not for the medicare program," said Zhoema. "Even a normal delivery costs about 200 yuan (US$24), which makes up more than 10 percent of our annual earning."

With financial problems and little access to traffic and medical facilities, childbirth remains a life-and-death challenge for peasant and herder women in some outlying areas in the northwestern province.

"Most herders' wives apt to give births at home, and two out of10 newborn babies died of dystocia before the medicare program became available in Sept. 2003," said He Minglu, a doctor with thevillage hospital in Senduo village, Guinan county of the South Qinghai (Hainan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

The county was one of the first eight selected by the provincial government for a trial operation of the program, which exempts peasant and herder women of all medical expenses for a normal delivery and part of the expenses in case of a Cesarean section.

The move has inspired more women with increased confidence to go to hospitals for childbirth this year. In Guinan county alone, the mortality rates of pregnant women and newborns have dropped by46 percent and 40 percent respectively, according to statistics provided by the county's health administration.

In Gangcha county in the northeastern part of the province, 82 percent of the expectant mothers now prefer to give birth at hospitals.

"The efforts have proven effective in relieving the herders' burden and ensuring the security of women and their babies," said Li Xiuzhong, an official with the Qinghai Provincial Health Administration. He said his province was the first in China to provide free midwifery services for women in need.

China has made sustained progress in improving the living conditions for women and kids in recent years, but gap still exists between the developed eastern regions and the underdeveloped central western regions.

While the mortality rate of pregnant women in the municipalities of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin and the affluent Zhejiang Province on the east coast is around 20 out of every 100,000, that in the western regions, including Qinghai, Yunnan, Guizhou and Gansu provinces, still hovers around 70 out of every 100,000.

(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2004)