Kabul, May 04: A new report on the status of mothers in the world indicates that Afghanistan has the highest lifetime risk of maternal mortality.
The annual report by the nonprofit group, Save the Children, is based on data about conditions for mothers and children in 164 countries, including 43 developed countries and 121 developing nations.
In the Mothers’ Index, which has been compiled for the past 12 years, a number of factors such as maternal mortality rate, women’s life expectancy, and overall health, education and economic conditions for women and children were considered.
According to Save the Children, Afghanistan is the worst place in the world for a mother while Norway is the best with the lowest maternal and child mortality rates.
A Norwegian woman has an average life expectancy of 83 years and just one in 175 will lose a child younger than five years old.
In contrast, an Afghan woman lives in average for 45 years and one of every five children does not live to the age of five.
“At this rate, every mother in Afghanistan is likely to suffer the loss of a child,” the report concluded.
Additionally, 82 percent of women in Norway use modern contraception while less than 16 percent of Afghan women use similar precautionary methods.
The findings also show that in the world’s 10 worst countries, on average, one in six kids dies before the age of five, and one in three suffers from malnutrition. Almost half the population in these countries lacks access to clean water.
The 10 worst places to be a mother include Afghanistan, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Yemen, Chad, DR Congo, Eritrea, Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic.
On the other hand, the world’s top 10 countries for mothers are Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France.
The study recognized the United States as the 31st country among the 43 developed nations.
“A woman in the US 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,” the report says.
“The human despair and lost opportunities represented in these numbers demand mothers everywhere be given the basic tools they need to break the cycle of poverty and improve the quality of life for themselves, their children, and for generations to come,” the report added.
It suggests that governments and international agencies can significantly help women and girls in developing countries by improving their education, health care and economic opportunities.
——-Agencies