Text and photograph courtesy UNICEF, a partner and Cooperating Organization with dgCommunity Youth for Development. Text quotes Guy Degan, from the UNICEF website.

“This year, UNICEF’s flagship report, ‘The State of the World’s Children’ launched on 15 January – addresses the need to close one of the greatest health divides between industrialized and developing countries: maternal mortality. Here is one in a series of related stories. Niamey, 9 January 2009 – Aminatou Moukaila, eight months pregnant with her second child, came to the Madina Integrated Health Centre in Niamey for a regular check-up.

She's one of thousands of women now benefiting from the recent introduction of free pre-natal health care in Niger – a country where the maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world and the child mortality rate is among the highest, and where the average woman gives birth to seven children.

With less than 50 percent of pregnant women in Niger receiving some anti-natal health services, UNICEF is working with the government to boost the availability and quality of maternal health care – especially in rural areas – and train more health workers to ensure safe deliveries, respond to obstetrical emergencies and provide adequate care for the newborn. Delivering a child at home is a deeply entrenched tradition among Nigerian women.

This socio-cultural factor is often reinforced by the distance to the health centres, the low performance of health services, and a general lack of knowledge about the benefits of attended deliveries. Only a third of expectant mothers either deliver at a hospital, health post or with the

help of a trained midwife at home. And many who actually come to health facilities do so as a last resort, in case of complication, often when it is too late. To avert maternal and child deaths, UNICEF-supported maternal health centres are working to raise the awareness of women to not only use pre-natal services but also seek expert help for delivery.

"We have one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. The infant mortality rate is also high,” says UNICEF HIV/AIDS and Maternal and Newborn Health Specialist Dr. Marie-Claire Mutanda. “So when mothers use these services they can be assisted whenever emergencies occur as most obstetrical emergencies occur during delivery time.”