AP PHOTOS: Sidecar ambulances help moms give birth in India

NARAYANPUR, India (AP) — The motorbike roared as it strained to carry the ambulance sidecar up a steep river bank. The bike's rear tire whirred in place, kicking up water and mud while the sidecar — a hospital bed on wheels, under a white canvas canopy — lolled dangerously. Two health workers, who had been following on foot, tried pushing it, but it didn't budge.

Eventually, the three gave up and settled for digging a new path.

After 40 minutes of digging and a push to lift the vehicle from the river bed onto the muddy path, the team was on its way again. The bike ambulance resumed its nine-mile trek across the forest known as Abhujmarh, or “the Unknown Hills,” to reach 23-year-old Phagni Poyam, nine months pregnant in the isolated village of Kodoli.

When the team arrived, Poyam was waiting next to her sleeping 1-year-old boy, Dilesh. Like many babies in Kolodi, Dilesh wasn't born in a hospital, both because of the distance, and distrust of authorities. But in recent years, Poyam said, she has seen women or their babies dying during childbirth and she doesn't want to take any chances.

“My baby will be safer,” she said in Gondi, a language spoken by an estimated 13 million members of the Indigenous Gond community.

Motorbike ambulances are helping mothers give birth in Naryanpur district, in central India's Chhattisgarh state. The heavily forested district is one of India’s most sparsely populated, with about 139,820 inhabitants spread over an area larger than Delaware. Many local villages, like Kodoli, are 16 kilometers (10 miles) or more from motorable roads. The state has one of the highest rates of pregnancy-related deaths for mothers in India, about 1.5 times the national average, with 137 pregnancy-related deaths for mothers per 100,000 births.

While authorities...