China has made substantial progress in improving maternal and child health, but great disparities between the developed eastern and the underdeveloped western regions, the urban and rural areas as well as the rich and poor may affect its drive to achieve better results, experts say.

　　China has been dedicated to health care of women and children, especially mothers, and is on track for achieving Millennium Development Goals, Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization's representative in China, said.

　　The progress can be seen in the marked drop in the maternal mortality rate, which fell from 1,500 per 100,000 in 1949 to 51.2 per 100,000 in 2003, and the infant mortality rate, which declined from 200 to 25.5 per 1,000 during the same period.

　　China now ranks 88th among 191 countries in the world in the regard, ahead of many other developing countries.

　　However, big disparities between the east and west of China, between cities and the countryside and between a floating population and residents in cities remain and may affect the country's efforts if the poor do not have easy access to medical services, said Bekedam, who attended a ceremony in Beijing to mark April 7, World Health Day, which focuses on the theme of "Make every mother and child count."

　　According to the 2004 Children Development Report of China issued by the National Working Committee for Children and Women of the State Council, 29 million poverty-stricken people lived in the countryside in 2003, most in the western areas. The 2003 MMR and IMR in remote areas was 5.8 times and 4.4 times higher than in eastern coastal areas.

　　In Shanghai, for example, the IMR has dropped to 10 per 100,000, almost as low as developed countries, while in Tibet the rate is still 100 per 100,000.

　　Siri Tellier, United Nations Population Fund representative in China, voiced the same concern. "Two-thirds of maternal deaths in urban areas appear to be of migrant women, who account for only 10 percent of total pregnancies. And more than 75 percent of maternal deaths are preventable," she said.

　　She warned that the downward trends may be stagnating in China and there are worrying signs that the child mortality rate may be declining more slowly for girls than for boys.

　　Koenraad Vanormelingen, senior program officer for health with the United Nations Children's Fund, warned that the disparities are in danger of increasing.

　　"Different indicators have shown remarkable declines, but changes are slowing down. Take IMR for example. Little progress has been made in the past five years in poor regions," he said.

　　The experts urged the Chinese government to invest more money to ensure that everybody, especially those in poor, remote or ethnic minorities regions, has access to medical services.

　　(Xinhua)