Nyomon Lilian will never forget the day she decided to become a midwife. A few years ago, in her hometown of Kajo Keji, in South Sudan’s Equatoria region, she watched as her neighbour bled out after giving birth.

Ngun Hlei was lucky to have seen a midwife during her third pregnancy. Many women in Myanmar don’t. “I felt very unwell for many months during that pregnancy. But what could I do? I carried on with my work making snacks for selling at the market,” she explained recently in the...

Aashu Tresa, 32, remembers when becoming a mother was a life-or-death proposition. When she was growing up, no one in her rural village, Misree Kolhi, gave birth under the care of a trained health worker. “Unskilled, untrained birth attendants were doing deliveries in our...