Seven hundred yuan (US$100) is the price tag for a fashionable dress or a pair of sport shoes. But to some pregnant women in poverty-stricken rural areas in Shaanxi Province, such as Tuo Yanfei, the money could mean the difference between life and death.

Tuo, a farmer in Liujianwan village in Suide County of Shaanxi, northwest China, who gave birth to a son in November, received money from the government which aids rural women giving birth in 25 poverty-stricken counties.

With the aid, averaging 689 yuan for each mother, Tuo was hospitalized, receiving free physical checks and delivery. Without it, she might have opted to give birth in her poor home, where her life might have been in danger.

"The program will be expanded to cover almost all rural, pregnant women in our province in a few years," said Sun Zhenlin, director of Division of Women, Children, and Community Healthcare, Department of Health, Shaanxi Province.

The central government's recent economic stimulus package (announced at the beginning of last month) is focused on people's livelihoods and will boost funds for the expansion of aid programs for rural, pregnant women in central and west China, local government officials in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces say.

Program for poverty-stricken countryside women parturition

Tuo's family earn about 5,000 yuan every year. Though affordable, the costs of giving birth and of raising the newborn child were still worrying.

If financial demands forced her to stay away from hospitalization, the risk of giving birth in a poor quality rural home was huge.

The cost of giving birth in hospital, ranging from about 500 yuan to 2,500 yuan, is a burden to rural women in Shaanxi, where farmers' annual income averaged about 2,645 yuan per person in 2007.

"When my granddaughter-in-law gave birth it was free from cost," said Tuo's grandmother-in-law. "The money we saved will cover the expense of her and her son in the month after birth."

"The death rate of pregnant rural women is a great concern of ours," said Sun. "We are endeavoring to aid more expectant women."

In a drive to help expectant women and expand public healthcare, Shaanxi put into practice a new government aid program on giving birth in the countryside in May 2008. The provincial government chose 25 poverty-stricken counties to try out the program.

"The ordinary people are very happy about the program," Sun said.

Stimulus package advances aid expansion

Up to the end of October 2008, 16,769 expectant women from rural Shaanxi were aided by the program, 90.73 percent of whom were fully exempted from the charge of giving birth in hospital, and a total of about 8.68 million yuan of government funds were used.

The provincial government wanted to expand the program so that it could include 50 counties in 2009, 77 in 2010, and 104 counties and districts in 2012, with an accumulating investment of 531 million yuan.

China initiated a project to cut the death rate of expectant women and the tetanus rate of newborns in 2000 in 12 provinces in central and western parts of the country.

With the project proceeding, government branches have added more medical equipment in the countryside, improved medical services, trained doctors, publicized information and partially aided mothers giving birth.

The program of making giving birth free in poverty-stricken counties in Shaanxi is a new evolution in the project.

According to a central government plan, programs of aiding rural, expectant women to give birth in hospital will be expanded to all counties in central and west China from 1,200 counties in 2007.

The expansion needs financing. Money is now available after an executive meeting of the State Council, or the cabinet, announced on November 9 that China will take 10 major steps to stimulate domestic consumption and growth - the economic stimulus package.