ZAMBIA has been ranked at 159 in the Save the Children’s 14th annual State of the World’s Mothers report

Doreen Nawa reports...........

ZAMBIA has been ranked at 159 in the Save the Children’s 14th annual State of the World’s Mothers report, which was released on Tuesday this week.

The report highlights the challenges facing mothers and new-borns worldwide.

And Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the toughest place in the world to be a mother ranked 176 while Finland is the best ranked 1 according to the report.

The report features the Mothers Index, an annual ranking of mothers’ wellbeing in 176 countries around the globe. This year, Zambia is ranked at 159, near the bottom of the list of countries from best to worst.

The Nordic countries sweep the top spots while, for the first time, countries in sub-Saharan Africa take up each of the bottom ten places in the annual list.

The Mothers’ Index, in the State of the World’s Mothers report, is a unique ranking of 176 countries around the globe, showing those that are succeeding and those failing in their support to mothers. 

It assesses mothers’ well-being using indicators of maternal health, child mortality, education and levels of women’s income and political status.

 “By investing in mothers and children, nations are investing in their future prosperity. If women are educated, are represented politically, and have access to good quality maternal and child care, then they and their children are much more likely to survive and thrive and so are the societies they live in. 

“Huge progress has been made across the developing world, but much more can be done to save and improve millions of the poorest mothers and newborns’ lives,” the report read in parts.

The Mothers’ Index reveals the United States ranks 30th, behind countries with much lower incomes, such as Lithuania or Slovenia, owing to weaker performance on measures of maternal health and child-wellbeing.

But the report shows how all countries need to improve the education and health care of disadvantaged mothers.

The Birth Day Risk Index, also contained in the report, compares first-day death rates for babies in 186 countries. . One million babies die each year on the day they enter the world, – or two every minute  making the first day by far the riskiest day of a person’s life in almost every country in the world.

This is despite the low-cost interventions that are available to tackle the high rate of baby deaths on the first day of life.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains by far the most dangerous region to be born with the deaths of newborns actually increasing there in the past few decades.