Nordics and New Zealand ranked best countries for mothers

Spin Echo · Post by **Spin Echo** » 2007-05-08 11:52pm

NZHerald wrote:NZ among best places in world to be a mum
Email this storyPrint this story 1:05PM Wednesday May 09, 2007

Source: Save the Children
New Zealand mothers are among the luckiest in the world, a new international survey from Save the Children says.

Top Ten

1Sweden
2Iceland
2Norway
4New Zealand
4Australia
4Denmark
7Finland
8Belgium
9Spain
10Germany

Bottom Ten

131Djibouti
132Burkina Faso
133 Ethiopia
134Eritrea
135 Angola
136 Guinea-Bissau
137 Chad
138 Yemen
139 Sierra Leone
140 Niger

The survey ranks New Zealand the fourth best place in the world to be a mother, based on health and financial considerations behind Sweden, Iceland and Norway.

The country would rank even higher, but is brought down by its poor record in caring for children -- the report ranks New Zealand 20th equal out of 43 comparable countries in terms of child well-being.

Six in every 1000 New Zealand children die before reaching the age of five.

This is twice the number of the best ranked country for child well-being -- Iceland, which records three child deaths for every 1000.

The annual report, The State of the World's Mothers (pdf), analyses indicators such as the risk of maternal mortality, female life expectancy, use of contraception, female education, ratio of female to male income, and access to health care.

It also examines the under-five mortality rate to establish conditions for children, before putting the two together to establish the Mothers' Index.

The report focuses on mothers as it says providing mothers with access to education, economic opportunities and maternal and child health care gives mothers and children the best chance to survive and thrive.

This is the eighth time the report has been produced, and this year it surveys 140 countries.

The report says: "The top 10 countries, in general, attain very high scores for mothers' and children's health, educational and economic status. Niger ranks last among the 140 countries surveyed. The 10-bottom ranked countries -- nine from sub-Saharan Africa -- are a reverse image of the top 10, performing poorly on all indicators."

In countries at the bottom of the table, on average one in 13 mothers will die from pregnancy-related causes. Nearly one in five children die before their fifth birthday.

When comparing Sweden -- at the top of the table -- with bottom-ranked Niger, the results are dramatic.

Skilled health personnel are present at virtually every birth in Sweden, while only 16 per cent of births are attended in Niger.

A typical Swedish woman will live to be 83, 72 per cent are using some modern method of contraception and four children in every 1000 will die before the age of five.

In contrast, in Niger, a typical woman will live to be 45. Only 4 per cent of women are using modern contraception, and one child in four dies before age five. Every mother is likely to suffer the deaths of two children.

In New Zealand, the average woman will live until the age of 82, 72 per cent use modern forms of contraception, and six children in every 1000 will not reach their fifth birthday.

In the developing world, more than half of under-five deaths are caused by pneumonia, diarrhoea or newborn conditions.

In the world's wealthier nations, child deaths are most likely the result of injury suffered in traffic accidents, intentional harm, drowning, falling, fire and poisoning.

Unsurprisingly, the Nordic countries top the list with New Zealand and its west island also up there. However if you go to the actual Save the Children Website, the United States ranks 26th, just below Latvia. It really is bloody shameful.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-05-09 12:00am

Hmm... my country is somewhere in the first tier. Seems not all is lost for our healthcare.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-05-09 02:53am

A good result, could stand a little room for improvement. On the other hand it could always get worse.

Remember kids, voting National kills babies.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2007-05-09 03:40am

Stas Bush wrote:Hmm... my country is somewhere in the first tier. Seems not all is lost for our healthcare.

We beat you by two places, coming in at 34. Take that Ruskies!

And the US ranking is really atrocious for a country claiming to be the best in the world in everything and all that jazz - its squarely in the ex-communist eastern Europe block of countries (albeit towards the top of that pile), something I think the US shouldn't be proud of considering the disproportionate level of resources available for improving the situation.

Interesting that Japan is even deeper in that group. I have no idea how they got there - I was under the impression that they had the standard 1st world healthcare. Can anyone shed some light on that?

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2007-05-09 03:53am

I have no idea how they got there - I was under the impression that they had the standard 1st world healthcare.

Actually Japan has the longest average life expectancy, which is one of the key healthcare indicators. However, other things like newborn care, mother friendliness also mean a lot. Look how good socialist/post-Soviet countries square off with the first world - despite the bad mortality rates which lower the average life expectancy, we all are in the first group on birth-friendliness.

It might be interesting to look at the 2006 Mother Index:
http://www.savethechildren.org/publicat ... _final.pdf
The differences come from some sort of restructurization of mother healthcare components.

So I guess it depends on the healthcare components you take.

Walsh · Post by **Walsh** » 2007-05-09 05:09am

Wow, I'm honestly surprised to see Australia tied for fourth place with NZ and Denmark. I thought we would have done much worse than that based on all the accusations of chauvinistic attitudes in Australia, from the Australian media.

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2007-05-09 10:05am

UK at 12? that's a remarkably nice surprise. Usually these surveys point at us for being the worst of the worst of anything and everything.

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2007-05-09 12:07pm

That is what Socialist helthcare gets you.

Good thing that the US of A do not have it so it would rank as low as those damn pinco commy 3rd rate staes now is it not?

Zac Naloen · Post by **Zac Naloen** » 2007-05-09 12:14pm

Dartzap wrote:UK at 12? that's a remarkably nice surprise. Usually these surveys point at us for being the worst of the worst of anything and everything.

That's only when the studies are done within the UK.

The_Saint · Post by **The_Saint** » 2007-05-09 12:58pm

Walsh wrote:Wow, I'm honestly surprised to see Australia tied for fourth place with NZ and Denmark. I thought we would have done much worse than that based on all the accusations of chauvinistic attitudes in Australia, from the Australian media.

...Attitudes??? New Zealand and Australia are near identical and we did give Denmark it's future Queen...

I'd be surprised if there was a difference.

Tranan · Post by **Tranan** » 2007-05-09 01:44pm

Well I am happy fore the fact that I live in Sweden.

So all my kids can have a future and good healthcare.

Sadly that there are alot of nations on this list that isent a Scandinavian standard.

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2007-05-09 02:01pm

Canada ranked 15 for mothers, 12 for women and 25th for children which is pretty sad given our rather generous healthcare system. According to the chart we have a child mortality rate of 6 per 1,000 births for children under five. I wonder what contributes to such things, SIDS obviously but there must be other factors.

Post by **Cairber** » 2007-05-09 02:18pm

The AAP said in 2004: "Assuming causality, however, promoting breastfeeding has the potential to save or delay approximately 720 postneonatal deaths in the United States each year."

Yet our rates are falling and a lot of that has to do with moms not getting the support and information they need. This comes from lack of adequate health care, lack of adequate maternity leave...

ok blahblahblah you have all heard me rant about this before.

in short, I am not surprised that the USA is where it is or that our infant mortality rate is so high.

Add in our skyrocketing Csection rates (leads to higher infant and maternal mortality) and the alarmingly high premature rates for minority children (again, health care comes into play)....well, it's just not surprising where we are on the list.

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2007-05-09 02:20pm

Aren't alot of US C-sections voluntary and therefore avoidable?

Post by **Cairber** » 2007-05-09 02:34pm

Yup. A recent study that controlled and only looked at truly voluntary Csections (many studies define "voluntary" to include second time sections and sections for reasons like breech baby or high multiples; however, this study did not count these things), found:

The risk of death in the first 28 days of life was 1.77 per 1,000 live births among women who had C-sections, compared with 0.62 per 1,000 for women who delivered vaginally. Even after analyzing the various causes of infant death, the researchers could find no clear explanation for the difference.

Again, they only looked at full term, head down singletons with no medical risks.