This general fall in nutritional standards, together with environ-mental factors and stress, negatively affects women s health. The significant increase in the basic mortality rate has been accompanied by a decline in the basic birth rate and an increase in the maternal mortality rate. The effect of malnutrition is reflected in increased child mortality if compared with the infant mortality rate which decreased between 1980 and 1994. The increase in the maternal mortality rate is mostly caused by hemorrhage, eclampsia, abortion and sepsis, which may be explained by the deterioration of the health care system in general and a decrease in the number of women s clinics from 1,003 in 1991 to 966 in 1994. Number of hospital beds fell from 7,900 in 1993 to 7,600 in 1994.
Abortions remain the main form of birth control in the country.
Present difficulties have left divorced women and widows more insecure than before. In the communist era there was a law obliging men to pay benefits for the children to former wives following divorce. The amount was rather more symbolic than to provide financial support. There are no such measures in the transitional society. However, women s problems in this social group can be neutralized by strong family traditions of mutual support in extended families.