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| savethechildren.org |
Mother’s Day
is a holiday celebrated to honor motherhood throughout the world. Although it
is observed in different forms and at different times worldwide, the basic
thought behind it remains the same. The
American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and
became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. It traditionally involved presenting
the mothers with flowers, gifts and cards.
Beside celebrating love by giving
gifts, we all have a moral obligation to protect the health of mothers round
the world. It does not end with only making child birth safe for her but continue
well beyond that into her geriatric years by building systems that are
effective, inclusive and sustainable. Many diseases like breast and ovarian
cancer, osteoporosis and other chronic diseases can be prevented or treated completely
by early diagnosis.
Improving maternal health is among the
most challenging of the Millennium Development Goals. In commemoration of
Mother’s Day, Save the Children published its 16th annual State of the World’s
Mothers report; Norway rose to the top of the list while Somalia remained last
for the second year in a row.
The five indicators in the 2015 Mothers' Index of
179 countries are the lifetime risk of maternal death; children's well-being;
educational status; economic status and political status, measured by women's
participation in national government.
Every day, 17,000 children die before
reaching their fifth birthday.
Best countries for mothers: (Top five
in Mothers index)
Norway
Finland
Iceland
Denmark
Sweden
Worst countries for mothers: ( Last five
in Mothers index)
Somalia
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Central African Republic
Mali
Niger
The United States continues to be
outpaced by smaller countries in its treatment of its mothers, dropping two
spots to 33rd place.
There are
nearly 2 billion mothers in the world (85.4 million in the U.S.) and 4.3 new
mothers are added every second.
Quite a
large number of children in developed countries live with one parent, most
likely mother. Educated mothers are more likely to insist on their children
being educated, specially girls. Their children are more likely to continue
education and study for 2 hours more compared to illiterate mothers
Women all
over the world are delaying childbirth, the average age of woman having the
child for first time rose from 25 to 26 recently in US and it is 29 in other
developed countries such as Japan and Switzerland according to data released by
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Maternal Mortality Rate
According to
WHO:
The current
MMR is 216 deaths per 100,000 live births.
Every day,
approximately 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and
childbirth.
99% of all
maternal deaths occur in developing countries where 1/3 of births are performed
by unskilled professional.
Young
adolescents face a higher risk of complications and death as a result of
pregnancy than other women.
One in 4
women who die during childbirth is simply because of post-partum hemorrhage,
which is preventable at meagre cost of 99 Cents.
Between 1990
and 2015, maternal mortality worldwide dropped by about 44%.
Between 2016
and 2030, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals, the target is to reduce
the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100 000 live births.
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| MMR across the globe |
The top 5 countries in the world with lowest maternal mortality rates are Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark.
The 5 countries with highest maternal mortality rates are South Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Sierra Leone and Burundi.
Fertility rates around the world.
The current
fertility rate is 2.5 children per woman. Africa remain the region with highest
fertility at 4.7 children per woman while Europe has the lowest fertility at
1.6 children per woman.
The world’s
highest fertility rates exist in Niger, with an average of 7.75 children born
per women.
The world’s lowest fertility rates are found in Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan, and Singapore, where an average of 1.2 children are born per woman.
The net reproduction
rate is the average number of daughters that would be born to a woman taking
into account the prevailing levels of fertility, female mortality and the sex
ratio at birth. The current reproduction rate globally is 1.1 surviving
daughters per woman except for Africa, where the net reproduction rate is 1.9
This means that, on average, each African mother is replacing herself with
nearly two daughters, which leads to fast population growth.
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| Net Reproduction Rate |
Statistics
are far more than numbers. It is the human despair and lost opportunities
behind these numbers that call for changes to ensure that mothers everywhere
have 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.
