New Delhi, April 8: Sonia Gandhi will be the chief guest tomorrow at a meeting on maternal, newborn and child healthcare, signalling the importance the government places on issues concerning women and children.

The meeting has been organised by the Union health ministry with the World Health Organisation and several health NGOs participating. Tomorrow is the last day.

Health activists hope that Sonia?s presence will prompt the Congress and its partners to ensure that basic medicare reaches the millions of rural women in the country.

The common minimum programme lays emphasis on health, women and children are the focus of the government?s ambitious rural health mission.

In India, a million infants die each year before living even four weeks ? the highest count in the world.

The deaths are mainly because nursing and pregnant mothers do not have access to basic healthcare and proper advice on childcare.

India, Pakistan, China, Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria account for more than 50 per cent of infant deaths globally.

?Many of these deaths could be prevented with existing cost-effective and proven interventions ? if only these interventions were more widely available,? points out a WHO report released on World Health Day yesterday.

Many of the problems occur because of illiteracy, poverty and the tradition of giving birth at home. Sixty-five per cent of Indian women still give birth at home without skilled professional help.

The WHO report places India among the countries which are ?slow progressors? in the area of mother and child healthcare. It points out that globally, one woman dies every minute because of complications during pregnancy or childbirth.

Even in progressive states like Punjab ? which has the highest per capita income in the country ? women?s access to healthcare is low, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, deputy regional director of WHO, said after the release of the report.

In 10 of the 15 major states ? Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Rajasthan ? maternal mortality rate is over 400 per 100,000 births.