Would you give birth in a cow shed?

KATMANDU, Nepal - In the mountains of tradition-bound Nepal, women give birth the way they always have: in the cow shed.
When labor begins, they are sent out of the house, because bleeding associated with childbirth is seen as polluting. Most give birth on dirty rags or simply on the shed's cow-dung floor, sometimes with a local midwife helping. After the birth, the midwife routinely pummels or steps on the new mother's abdomen 'to get the bad blood out.'
Those traditional practices - combined with an often four-hour walk to the nearest health facility, an average marriage age of 16 and a tradition of unsafe abortions of unwanted female fetuses - are key reasons the country's maternal mortality rate has long been among the highest in the world, health experts say.