Free bus rides driving safer births for Nepali women

RAMECHHAP, Nepal — As a teenager, Meera Nepali was terrified as she went into labor with her first child at home in a remote village, kilometers from a hospital with nobody but her mother-inlaw to help.

“I was scared, but that was the norm. We didn’t have doctors close by,” Nepali said of her three-day labor in Khadadevi village in Nepal’s hilly Ramechhap district.

This year, however, she delivered her second child in a rural health center thanks to a small cash incentive that is getting pregnant women to hospital by paying their bus fares.

The Aama Surakshya (Protection for Mothers) program has helped more than 2 million Nepali women access medical services in the impoverished country where dying in childbirth remains a very real risk.

The UN Population Fund says giving birth remains a leading killer of women of reproductive age in Nepal, where the risk of dying in childbirth is higher than anywhere else in South Asia except Afghanistan.

A huge obstacle to safe deliveries is the Himalayan nation’s tough terrain, which often makes getting to a health facility a long and expensive journey, as well as the paucity of clinics in many parts of the country.

“We found that one of the main reasons rural women did not go to a hospital during childbirth was because they did not have hard cash to pay for transportation,” said Suresh Tiwari, one of the original architects of the scheme.

The program was started in 2005 with British aid money, but has since been taken over by the Nepal government.

Today, it covers not just transport but medical costs for mothers and babies and includes a cash bonus for attending antenatal checkups.

Last year marked a milestone for the program: More Nepali women opted for hospital births over home deliveries for the first time on record, official figures show.

‘Die at home’

The scheme is also saving lives outside the maternity wards, in part by tackling cultural obstacles.

Deeply patriarchal attitudes and traditional preferences for home births also see hospital visits dismissed as an unnecessary expense for poor families.

Sita Khatri went into labor weeks before her due date and, unable to walk the three hours to the nearest health center, gave birth to a healthy boy at home.

But the 27-year-old suffered a retained placenta, a painful and potential fatal complication of childbirth, and had to plead with her husband to take her to hospital.

“He said we don’t have money. I insisted, saying there are government facilities, we won’t have to spend too much,” Khatri said.

“It is better to go the hospital than to die at home.”

Eventually, Khatri’s husband relented, and she was treated for free at a nearby clinic. The couple were also given 1,000 rupees to pay for transport.