Giving birth to a child was a life-or-death struggle for the mother and baby

Giving birth to a child was a life-or-death struggle for the mother and baby as late as the early half of this century; an estimate survey revealed a mortality rate among mothers as high as 15 per thousand and infant mortality as high as 200 per thousand at that time. Midwifery was practiced by the mother-in-law, the mother herself, or more popular, by an elderly woman in the village who practiced more superstitious means than useful aid to the mother.
    By the time of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, some sixty years ago, a basic maternity and child hygiene facility had been established in China. The statistics for 1950 reveal that there were 126 maternity and/or child hygiene hospitals or institutions, 54 midwifery schools and 45,910 trained midwives.
    While efforts were made to train more medical workers, traditional midwives were also trained in the new midwifery method. When they graduated, they were able to deliver a baby safely in the case of normal births, and to diagnose a difficult labor in its early stages.
    Thanks to the popularization of the new method, childbed fever and infantile tetanus rates witnessed a significant decline. However, difficult labor, post-natal hemorrhage and premature delivery were threatening women’s lives. To prevent this, the Chinese government started to establish and perfect a grassroots health case system for pregnant women.