Nepal is the deadliest place for childbirth

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KATHMANDU, Dec 19 (Reuters) When pregnant Nepali villager Suntali Rai felt pain in her stomach, relatives comforted her and urged patience as she waited for the birth of her second child.

But when Rai, aged 30, began bleeding, they realised she was in labour and struggled in vain for two days to deliver the baby at home in remote Dolakha district before boarding a bus for the 150-km trip to a Kathmandu hospital.

''We managed to save the woman but it was too late for the baby,'' said Kasturi Malla, who carried out a Caesarian operation on Rai two weeks ago in a country that ranks among the worst places on earth to have a baby.

Every year nearly 6,000 Nepali women and 30,000 children die because of unsafe childbirth and neonatal practices, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

''This maternal death toll makes Nepal the deadliest place in the world to give birth, outside Afghanistan and a clutch of countries in sub-Saharan Africa,'' the group's World Disasters Report, released in Kathmandu yesterday, said.

The report was originally published in Geneva last week.

Desperately poor Nepal has just 1,300 doctors working alongside 90,000 poorly trained health workers in 87 hospitals and less than 1,000 health centres for its 26 million people, official figures show.

Many of the nation's 4,000 villages have no health centre and 90 percent of births take place in homes without the help of skilled nurses, officials say.