Nearly 6,000 women and 30,000 infants in Nepal die annually because of unsafe childbirth and neonatal practices, according to an International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies report released on Monday in Kathmandu, Nepal, Reuters reports. The group's "World Disasters Report 2006" found that Nepal is "the deadliest place in the world to give birth, outside Afghanistan and a clutch of countries in sub-Saharan Africa." According to the report, there are 1,300 doctors, 90,000 undertrained health workers, 87 hospitals and fewer than 1,000 health centers for Nepal's 26 million people. The report also found that many of the country's 4,000 villages have no health center and that 90% of infants are delivered in homes without the help of trained nurses. In addition, nearly 40% of people in Nepal have incomes of less than $1 per day and many cannot afford to pay medical bills. According to the report authors, Nepali women are not permitted to discuss pregnancy with anyone but their husbands or seek medical attention without the assistance of another person. Mothers and infants also are regarded as "unclean" and are often forced to stay in unsanitary rooms or cowsheds for the first 11 days after delivery. Jonathan Walter, the report's editor, said, "This kind of discrimination greatly hampers [a woman and child's] chance of survival." The government in 2002 legalized abortion to help protect women from untrained health workers and has begun efforts to educate people about safe childbirth, Reuters reports (Sharma, Reuters, 12/18).
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