Free bus rides driving safer births for Nepali women

RAMECHHAP, Nepal - As a teenager, Meera Nepali was terrified as she went into labor with her first child at home in a remote village, kilometers from a hospital with nobody but her mother-in-law to help.

"I was scared, but that was the norm. We didn't have doctors close by," Nepali said of her three-day labor in Khadadevi village in Nepal's hilly Ramechhap district.

This year, however, she delivered her second child in a rural health center thanks to a small cash incentive that is getting pregnant women to hospital by paying their bus fares.