OUTSIDE the main hospital in San Cristóbal de las Casas, women in traditional multicoloured garb queue up to see a doctor. Many are pregnant or carry infants on their backs. One expectant mother says she fears there will not be a bed for her when she enters labour—all too common in the overcrowded hospital. Tales of deaths from hypertension, haemorrhage or infection during or after giving birth are common in the second city of the state of Chiapas. In a nearby village, one doctor recalls a woman whose journey took so long that she died on the street outside his clinic.

Hanna Ingber Win explains her reporting project in this photo montage.

Freelance journalist Hanna Ingber Win's photos, from the tea gardens of Assam, India. Assam has India's highest maternal mortality rate. Hanna went there to interview families who'd lost their mothers, and health care workers who try to help pregnant mothers get the medical help they need.

If Sulekha Lohar had only had access to an ambulance instead of that handcart.

If the clinic just had a doctor, instead of just empty shelves.

If the hospital only had a bloodbank, as we hear from American journalist Hanna Ingber Win, Sulekha's children might still have their Mother.

Also, a troubling closeup on reproductive health in one small part of the developing world there from Hanna, who specialises in maternal mortality reporting.

I had written about child marriage before. When I went to Ethiopia, I visited a program for girls who had fled early marriage in their villages and ended up in the capital Addis Ababa. I met a classroom full of such young girls. With their schoolbooks in hand, they looked like kids, not brides. I talked to some of the girls in depth about how their desire to continue their schooling had pushed them to leave their families and traditions behind and flee to what they hoped would be a better life. These girls had dreams, and the courage to pursue them.

Click on the image to view the article as it appeared in the Christian Science Monitor.