Within the Yushu Prefecture there is a Women's Hospital offering midwifery but widespread poverty prevents access to this service. Tibetan women are particularly shy and women's health issues and sex education are highly taboo. Birth complications are common which leads to:

• Unnecessarily high level of perinatal death (death of infant at or shortly after childbirth)
• Unnecessarily high level of maternal death during/shortly after childbirth - this makes life extremely difficult for the remaining large family, especially if nomadic
• Poor knowledge about contraception resulting in unplanned and unwanted pregnancy
• Poor knowledge about women's health resulting in introversion and perpetuation of the taboo perception

We aim to provide the following to the local impoverished people:

• Antenatal care and advice
• Delivery/childbirth
• Postnatal care and advice
• Sex education including advice on contraception (particularly to the students of the Rokpa School)
• Women's health education (particularly to the students of the Rokpa School)

We achieve this through the following initiatives:

• Sponsoring a full-time Tibetan midwife
• Sponsoring students to study midwifery at university who will work in the hospital upon qualification
• Training Rokpa medical students in basic midwife skills and discussing clinical conditions when encountered