A simple programme to train health workers in ways to save mothers from dying during childbirth is already paying off, doctors said on Tuesday.

Although it has only been in operation a few months, the Save the Mother Fund has helped women in eight countries get medical care during birth, the fund's founders at the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) said.

"Around the world, one woman dies each minute from complications of pregnancy and childbirth," Dr. Giuseppe Benagiano, chairman of the committee, told a news conference.

Concerned by this, Benagiano and colleagues set up a programme to train health workers to help care for these women -- who would rarely die if they gave birth in a modern hospital, where emergency care is available.

The programme currently targets eight countries -- Uganda, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Each is paired with trained physicians in Sweden, Britain, Italy, Canada and the United States.

While pregnancy is not an illness, it is not always safe, said Dr. Mahmoud Fathalla, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Assiut University in Egypt and one of the founders of the fund.

"If left to nature, one or two percent of women are expected to die in the process," Fathallah said. "The good news is they don't have to."

But training doctors at a country's top hospitals to deal with emergencies such as excessive bleeding or ruptured membranes does not help women who cannot get to such facilities, Benagiano said.

So the experts want to take the health care to the women, and if specialists are not there, then others are trained.

Mozambique, for example, has only 20 obstetric and gynecology specialists to care for a nation of 15 million people. Italian doctors worked with Mozambican surgical technicians -- who normally have no medical training at all -- to help them learn to perform some of the operations necessary during troubled births.

"You'd be surprised how good they are," Benagiano, head of Italy's National Institute of Health, said.

The programme, paid for in part by grants from Pharmacia Corp., also provided one ambulance for each of the southern African nation's hospitals.

Now, an extra 12 percent of women are giving birth at one programme site in Mozambique, and 23 percent more at a second one, Benagiano said.

A programme in Uganda aims to educate women, upgrade health facilities and reduce cultural barriers to medical care.

The programme made sure trained midwives were on hand in rural dispensaries in the Kiboga district of Uganda. Safe motherhood classes were held and a radio communications system was installed to link facilities.

"At least three percent more women are giving birth in health facilities in that region," Benagiano said. "Eight percent more are being treated for complications ... The case fatality rate is down more than two percent in the region."

He said while these gains were modest, the programme had been in place only a short time. "We hope to provide a model that is not too expensive and that doesn't take 10 years," he said.

Nonetheless, he added, some of the barriers are formidable. Some women cannot get help because they live in remote locations, while others must get past disapproving relatives.

"They define their femininity by being able to give birth, and needing help while giving birth is seen as a weakness, culturally," Benagiano said.

Often, he said, the husband and the mother-in-law must both give permission for a woman to seek health care

(From ChinaDaily.com)