A group of Vietnamese women whose husbands died or work far from home devote themselves to burying the fetuses of babies resulting from abortions or miscarriages.
The women, from Nam Vien Parish in Tien Du district neighbouring the northern city of Bac Ninh, provide a service that other married women who are busy looking after their husbands and children could not be involved in.
At night they have to work at full stretch. They will immediately travel 100 kilometrs from home to visit pregnant women in spite of chilly or rainy weather when they receive calls from people in need. They do not miss any call even when they are tired from their own work.
In the dead of night, a female doctor from a local hospital phoned Mary Pham Thi Hoai, one of the members, asking her group to help a young mother who gave premature birth to a baby who died after being placed in an incubator for 10 days. The baby’s father, with a low weak voice, also appealed to the group to bury his newborn baby.