Move to hospital deliveries saves mothers, infants in Tibet

During a few visits, she told Lhagyi and her mother-in-law about the benefits of hospital delivery. "You not only don't have to pay, but you could receive money from the government," she said.

Guo Sufang, UNICEF program officer in charge of health care, thought highly of the work of local people like Lhapa in Tibet. "They are nice, cooperative, and diligent," she said.

Guo admitted that because of geographic and historical reasons, health care used to be poor in Tibet. Before 1959, the mortality rate of pregnant and lying-in women was 5,000 per 100,000, while the infant mortality rate was 43 percent.

By last year, according to the regional health department of Tibet, the rates had dropped to 254.6 per 100,000 and 2.71 percent, respectively.

A report by the national Health Ministry said that in 2008, the average mortality rate of pregnant and lying-in women was 34.2 in every 100,000 in China as a whole and that of infants was 1.49 percent.