The Zonta Club of Bendigo has called on the community to help to produce about 2000 birthing kits. 

“It is estimated that, for every 11 birthing kits distributed, a mother or baby’s life is saved,” club media liaison Rosalie Lake said. 

The kits contain a plastic sheet, to prevent contact with the floor; soap and gloves, to prevent the spread of germs; gauze to clean the baby’s eyes; a sterile scalpel blade, to provide a clean cut of the umbilical cord; and clean string, to prevent bleeding from the umbilical cord. 

A birthing kit assembly day has been organised for Saturday, and will run from 9.30am until about 3pm at the Bendigo Senior Secondary College Language Centre at Gaol Road, Bendigo. 

Ms Lake said the area was accessible by the BSSC staff car park, opposite the Bendigo Bowls car park, and would be marked by a Zonta banner. 

Students from Catholic College, Crusoe College, Girton Grammar and Bendigo Senior Secondary College have been helping assemble the kits this past week. 

Ms Lake said 45 BSSC students assembled 160 complete kits and folded the plastic for a further 140 bags during a single class on Monday.

“It was a wonderful effort from the students involved,” she said.

Some of the students were completing their VET Certificate in Community Services. 

“The information they gained about the contrast in conditions for giving birth in Australia with remote African villages, for example, put the value of the simple birthing kits in perspective,” Ms Lake said. 

She said others were Karen and Afghani refugees.

“The students were delighted to be contributing to a service project that will save lives,” Ms Lake said. 

The 2000 kits the club is seeking to assemble will be in addition to the 6000 produced in the previous 12 months.

Last year’s kits were sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Zonta said a mother’s chance of dying through pregnancy or birth complications is 1 in 15.

Australia is one of the safest countries in the world in which to give birth or be born, according to the federal government. 

However, it conceded this is not the case for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

A report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in June 2015 said the maternal mortality ratio for Indigenous women was 13.8 deaths per 100,000 women who gave birth, more than double that of non-Indigenous women, which was 6.6 deaths.