While some underlying factors such as poverty and illiteracy adversely affect the health and economic outcomes of people living in rural areas, other challenges to women’s and children’s survival in these communities include lack of access to comprehensive sexual education and contraception. In many of these communities, discussing sex is taboo, and some girls are still forced to marry shortly after onset of menstruation. Often women are not empowered to negotiate sex with their partners, families have poor child-spacing practices and parents lack knowledge of appropriate vaccination schedules for their newborns. These factors added to economic and geographic vulnerabilities have led to negative maternal and child survival narratives in rural communities…read more