Due to isolation, lack of education, and cultural insensitivity, maternal mortality rates are particularly high among indigenous and rural women around the world.  In order to address this situation, international NGO Health Unlimited worked with its Peruvian partner, Salud Sin Límites Perú, to implement culturally sensitive birth facilities for Indigenous women of rural areas in Ayacucho, Peru.

In preparation for its program,  Health Unlimited workers began in 1997 to inquire about why only six percent of rural women used local health clinics to give birth. When NGO workers discovered that the procedures, the environment and the primary language used in the facilities were not meeting the needs of the women, Health Unlimited developed an intervention project to build trust between the health-care providers and the communities, ensuring that the women felt respected and satisfied with the environment and procedures. Features to make the delivery services culturally appropriate included a rope and bench for vertical position, inclusion of family during birth and the use of the Quechua language.

The rate of health facility births has now increased from six percent in 1999 to eighty-three percent in 2007 in this region of Peru. The success of this new approach supports that indigenous women do accept professional help and can benefit from medical institutions so long as the procedures and environment respect and accommodate their culture.

For more information, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/health/08glob.html