10-16 May 2013 #655

Mother of a problem

BRIKUTI RAI

Baspuri Sunar, 27, holds her two-year-old daughter who was delivered at Simikot’s district hospital. Sunar works as a daily wage labourer in Simikot and is among the many young mothers in rural Nepal who have benefited from the government’s safe motherhood programs. However, the district hospital doesn’t have the manpower or resources to offer caesarean section leaving hundreds of women to gamble with their lives. And even when resources are painstakingly collected to provide access to quality healthcare in remote parts of the country, endemic corruption ends up killing an entire community’s prosperity.