Improving maternal health in China


Posted on 11-18-2009	Translate this page

China’s rural health system has experienced major problems in adapting to the emerging market economy. The central government has recognised that it needs to take action to ensure more equitable access to services. This policy briefing paper, published by the Department for International Development (DFID), summarises lessons from a 10 year project that piloted strategies for addressing these problems in 97 poor counties, home to 46.78 million people.

As a result of the above intervention, the authors observe a 40 percent fall in maternal mortality. Additionally, they observed reductions in infant and under-five mortality. Finally, the project’s training and supervision system was clearly beneficial to improving the technical capacity of health care providers through a shift in attitudes towards the public health service, as evidenced by an increased use of outreach and preventive health care services. All this was achieved by combining activities across a range of system components, including human resources, infrastructure, financing and institutional capacity development, oriented towards meeting clearly defined targets for priority health programmes.

This brief describes these interventions and explores evidence on the effects made on improving maternal and child health outcomes. Authors: D. Huntingdon; L. Yunguo; S. Reddin (ed); L. Ollier; Department for International Development (DFID), UK

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