According to the World Health Organisation, more than 800 women die each day due to complications from childbirth.
One Australian foundation has been working to help reduce that statistic with a very simple idea.
So-called birthing kits cost just three dollars each to put together, and it's believed they will help save hundreds of lives.
"We start with the gloves, these are for the traditional birthing attendant. The soap goes in there, for them to wash their hands. Second glove. Gauze, to wipe the baby's eyes. Three pieces of string, this is for the umbilical cord, so two pieces and a spare piece to tie the umbilical cord. And the razor, to cut the umbilical cord."
That's Kylie Porter-Wright, a member of the professional women's group -- the Zonta Club, in Adelaide.
She is one of dozens of volunteers who have given up a Saturday afternoon to assemble birthing kits.
The description you just heard was the process of putting one together.
The sterile kits contain the bare essentials designed to help reduce the risk of infection for women giving birth in some of the world's harshest environments.
At the assembly day, the atmosphere is light but also determined.
"You cannot have a lamington until you've done your thousand kits. But that's just part of it. It's just wonderful. It's a wonderful thing to be involved in. If we make a thousand kits today, we've saved two thousand lives -- mother and child. It's pretty amazing."
The World Health Organisation estimates 830 women die each day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
It says 99 per cent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
The Chair of the Australian College of Midwives in the ACT, Rebekah Bowman, says unsanitary conditions can contribute.
"The conditions women would be giving birth in vary from just not even knowing that they should be washing their hands, and using gloves as a birth attendant, to really quite dirty areas as well, whether that's their floor or even sometimes in makeshift hospitals that aren't cleaning their equipment."
She says providing sterile equipment and training to birthing attendants helps prevent potentially deadly infections.
"Providing something as simple as a birthing kit to birth attendants and women around the world -- when that's been audited it looks like it's reducing infections by around 25 per cent, and that's saving a lot of lives."
The birthing kits were inspired by similar projects overseas.
Adelaide-based doctor Joy O'Hazy began what eventually became the Birthing Kit Foundation of Australia after being inspired by what might be described as an unlikely source.
"I went to the International Women's Conference in 1995 in Beijing, and I was listening to Sally Field. And she was talking about the fact that she'd been in Nepal the previous week, and that they were using very basic kits that women were using to birth."
At the time, actor Sally Field was working with the international not-for-profit, Save the Children.
Dr O'Hazy had been searching for a way to improve health outcomes for women when she heard the talk.
"I thought, this is something I can do myself. And if I can do it, then it's easier than maybe trying to solve breast cancer or have a laboratory."
She took the idea to the Zonta Club.
Soon Zonta groups around the country were holding assembly days.
Then in 2006 the project became a stand-alone one, with the launch of the Birthing Kit Foundation.
The kits have since been sent to more than 25 countries.
The batch put together in Adelaide will soon be headed for Nigeria, a country with one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world.
Rebekah Bowman is from the Australian College of Midwives.
"I can't really see a downside to it, only that we should potentially be doing more."
