Maternal and infant death rates have dropped sharply in China's underdeveloped central and western regions after a five-year program to improve health services, the Heath Ministry announced Wednesday.

The program, jointly launched by the ministry and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2006, covered 46 counties in the provinces and autonomous regions of Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou, Xinjiang, Jiangxi and Inner Mongolia, and Chongqing Municipality.

The rate of women who died in childbirth in those counties fell from 77.2 per 100,000 five years ago to 35.7 per 100,000 in 2009, a greater rate of decrease that the national average, said ministry official Shi Qi at a meeting held with UNICEF to review the program on Wednesday.

The infant mortality rate fell from 20.3 per thousand in 2005 to 14.1 per thousand in 2009 while the newborn death rate dropped from 14.6 per thousand in 2005 to 9.1 per thousand in 2009, Shi said.

The infant death rate, which is widely regarded as a good measure of a region's or a country's health care level, covers the percentage of babies who die in their first year.

UNICEF gave 31.39 million yuan (4.75 million U.S. dollars) worth of assistance to the program from 2006 to 2010, including 22.98 million yuan in cash and 9.4 million yuan worth of medical equipment, computers and vehicles.

Shi said the government would improve maternal and infant health care services in more regions, by offering more training to child health care practitioners and lifting the ratio of professional staff in county-level maternal health institutions.