India has made appreciable progress in improving its overall health status since the beginning of the century. The crude death rate has declined, but there is no sign of a decline in the maternal mortality rate. Also, most of the evidence relating to high maternal mortality rates is fragmentary.

Most studies of maternal mortality are hospital based. However, in developing countries, where many such deaths take place in the home, hospital statistics do not reflect the true extent of maternal mortality.

These services are provided through a large network of government as well as private Medicare institutions.

Viewed in retrospect, the development of hormonal methods of fertility control could be broadly divided into three main phases: (i) development of the oral contraceptive 'Pill based on synthetic ovarian steroid hormones; (ii) the demonstration that continuous oral administration of progestins in

Nearly 10 per cent of the women on whom the sub-dermal contraceptive Norplant was experimented cannot be traced. Did these women know that this device had been abandoned in the USA? Did anyone bother to get their informed consent of being experimented on?

Bangladesh, the eighth most populous nation in the world is also one of the poorest with a per capita income of less than US200. Although it enjoys a tropical monsoon climate, it is a country with unique geographic peculiarities, which distinguish it from the rest of the sub-continent.

Fertility behaviour in India, as anywhere else, is subject to socio-economic conditions as well as religious and cultural traditions.

The chapter describes how the women's health programme was initiated, the philosophy and the values that the programme attempted to evoke, the envisioned role of the Women's Health Workers and the kinds of preparation
that needed to be done before the programme could start.

In India, girls are married off at a young age, sometimes as low as 9-11 years.

From May 2, 1992, for one full week the town of Cochin in Kerala will witness the re-enactment of a historical event. The previous performance is said to have been orchestrated by King Dashrath a few thousand years ago.