Community health workers: emerging from the shadows?

In a study in this month's issue, Yanqiu Gao and colleagues explore the factors that led to impressive progress in maternal survival and the attainment of Millennium Development Goal 5 in China. The Chinese government's push for the medicalisation of maternal care (most births now occur in well equipped county hospitals) is at the crux of this achievement. Yet even a success story of this magnitude is tainted by the persistence of inequities: in the remote, poorer regions of western China, women have not benefited in the same way and a final message from the article is that a less centralised approach should be explored in that region.