Herdsmen living on the remote Zhuaxixiulong grassland,Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County in Gansu Province used to depend on luck when it came to the survival of their newborn children. Now, they can rely on doctors.

The township hospital in Zhuaxixiulong, in Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, has seen 31 expectant and new mothers this year, with all the babies receiving a clean bill of health, said Li Yu, the hospital's deputy head.

Li said every pregnant woman admitted to the hospital is given five physical examinations before delivery, as well as regular checkups for both her and her infant for the following three months.

The services were nonexistent 12 years ago, when many expectant mothers refused to give birth in hospital due to their inconvenient location, poor economic conditions and a tradition of home births, Li said.

"When they felt the baby was coming out, they sought help from 'experienced' elderly women in the village. But as a result of improperly conducted births, many babies contracted pneumonia right after birth and died before their fifth birthday," Li said.

But conditions have changed since then, with hospital births becoming the norm, helping to reduce infant mortality rates.

"More than 1,500 babies are born in our county each year, and 99 percent of pregnant women give birth in hospital," said Jia Sandan, director of the county's maternal and child health center.

The shift is part of the government's decade-long efforts to promote hospital deliveries and improve health care for newborns in rural areas.

According to Ministry of Health statistics, the mortality rate for children under the age of five dropped from 61 deaths per 1,000 births in 1991 to 15.6 per 1,000 births in 2011.

Government has set a target of reducing the ratio to less than 13 by 2020. But the infant mortality rate in rural areas is nearly three times that of urban areas, with premature births, pneumonia, congenital heart disease and accidental asphyxia claiming many children.

To narrow the yawning urban-rural gap, the central government launched a campaign to promote hospital births in central and western rural areas in 2000, expanding it nationwide in 2009.

The campaign provides a subsidy of 400 yuan (US$62.92) for women who choose to give birth in hospitals.

From 2009 to 2011, the central government poured 7.9 billion yuan into the program, raising the country's rural hospital birth rate to 96.7 percent from 92.3 percent in 2008.