In this second of five segments,  John Donnelly interviewed photographer Dominic Chavez about the images below. What follows are his perspectives on his assignment in Senegal, which focused in part on the Ministry of Health’s efforts to reduce maternal mortality:

"Senegal was the first country that we started to document, so it was the introduction to the kind of issues at hand. It was the country where I heard for the first time that almost 350,000 women die around the world every year in child birth. A woman dies almost every minute. So we wanted to witness the difficulties first hand."

KATHMANDU – For Gabriele Mallapaty, the idea sounded intriguing: A friend had suggested that the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health should offer a training session to the Ministry of Health and Population on how to become better negotiators.

Mallapaty, MLI’s County Lead in Nepal, asked Dr. Yasho Vardan Pradhan, then the Chief of Policy Planning and International Cooperation, what he thought of the idea. Pradhan, now Director General of Nepal's Department of Health Services, endorsed it almost immediately.