Norway Best Place to be a Mother, Afghanistan Worst - Report (NEWS BRIEF)

A student in Balochistan (بلوچستان) in Pakistan: access to improved education is key to boosting maternal and child health. PHOTO: M Bociurkiw/HUMNEWS(HN, May 8, 2011) - As Mother's Day is observed today in North America, a new report by Save the Children finds that Norway is the best place to be a mother and Afghanistan the worst.

The United States, meanwhile, comes in at #31 among the 43 developed countries ranked.

The findings are contained in Save the Children's 12th annual Mothers' Index, which analyzes health, education and economic conditions for women and children in 164 countries.

Other countries that ended at the top of the list are: Australia, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark. Competing with Afghanistan for worst rankings are: Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Yemen, Chad, D.R Congo and Eritrea.

Explaining the last place ranking of Afghanistan, the report said: "It has the highest lifetime risk of maternal mortality and the lowest female life expectancy in the world. It also places second to last on skilled attendance at birth, under-5 mortality and gender disparity in primary education. Performance on most other indicators also places Afghanistan among the lowest-ranking countries in the world."

With one of the most advanced health systems in the world, and a wealthy economy, the relatively low rank place of the United States may come as a surprise to some people. Save the Children explained that one of the key indicators used to calculate well-being for mothers is lifetime risk of maternal mortality.

Says the report: "The United States rate for maternal mortality is 1 in 2,100 - the highest of any industrialized nation.  In fact only three Tier I developed countries - Albania, the Russian Federation and Moldova - performed worst than the United States on this indicator.

A woman in the U.S. is more than seven times as likely as a woman in Italy or Ireland to die from pregnancy-related causes, and her risk of maternal death is 15-fold that of a woman in Greece."

So what is the world to do to boost countries such as Afghanistan out of its lowest-ranking status? Save the Children suggests that governments and international agencies boost funding to improve education levels for women and girls, increase access to maternal and child health care and advance women's economic opportunities. Current research and new studies on mothers' and children's well-being is also crucial. Finally, the US and other industrialized countries, governments and communities "need to work together to improve education and health care for disadvantaged mothers."