Los Angeles — The Mozambican government is investing in the building of "waiting houses" for pregnant women in order to increase the number of institutional births in rural areas, and reduce maternal mortality.

According to the country's First Lady, Maria de Luz Guebuza, speaking at a summit on health issues of African First Ladies in the American city of Los Angeles, 75 per cent of Mozambique's 128 districts now have "waiting houses" for mothers-to-be next to rural maternity wards.

This allows pregnant women to travel before their labour starts, and have somewhere reasonably comfortable to wait before they go into labour. This should make it more attractive for women to give birth in health institutions than at home.

The great majority of maternal deaths occur because of complications with births outside of health units. In some cases, women live 50 kilometres from the nearest health centre - it is quite impossible for them to cover this distance safely if they wait until they go into labour. But they could travel to the waiting houses weeks before they are due to give birth, and spend the last period of their pregnancy there safely.

Guebuza said that her office is working with the Health Ministry to mobilise resources for the construction of more waiting houses.

Ministry of Health figures indicate that maternal mortality has been cut by more than half over the past decade. In 1997, it was estimated that around 1,000 women died for every 100,000 births. The current figure, however, is 408 maternal deaths per 100,000 births.

There has been a similar decline in child mortality. In 1997, according to the census of that year, 245 children in every 1,000 live births died in the first five years of life. The figure has now been cut to 108 per 1,000 live births.