In Mexico, traditional midwives maintain the customs and rituals that have surrounded pregnancy and childbirth since pre-Hispanic times. 'Empirical' midwives are allowed to practise on the basis of experience and a minimal two-week training programme. Graduate nurse-midwives usually go into general nursing and few practise midwifery, despite taking a year's specialist training in their four-year course. A project with graduate nurse-midwives demonstrated safe practice--the nurse-midwives delivered 1,500 babies with no maternal deaths and only two infant deaths in the five-year period.