Africa Is Worst Place On Earth For Mothers And Children (US takes 11th)

snip>
"Conditions for children and mothers in the bottom-ranked countries are devastating," said Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children. "Many children are fortunate just to survive the first five years of life and have a chance to go to school."

In Burkina Faso, fewer than one in 10 women can read and write. In Ethiopia just 25 percent of the population has access to clean water.

Scandinavian countries sweep the top rankings for the best places to be a mother, while countries in sub-Saharan Africa dominate the bottom tier, the report said. Out of the 10 worst countries to be a mother or child, seven are in Africa.

In Sweden, which tops the list, nearly all women are literate. In Ethiopia, only 34 percent of women are literate. A mother in Ethiopia is 37 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life than a mother in Sweden.

The United States ranked 11th.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/health_article.aspx?storyid=78897

http://www.rakemag.com/features/detail.asp?catID=61&itemID=15314

It's about an American couple who had a baby in Norway.

I am utterly speechless. A country that cares about its citizens? Citizens that care about one another?

people in Norway who think they are well-off, aren't. The writer thought they were deluded because they had old cars and appliances and expensive pizza. One example to which he gave particular weight, was that teachers there take their lunch to work. gasp.

Here's the old, useless link-
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0915F73A5A0C748DDDAD0894DD404482

I'm glad I searched for it- I found this rebuttal (and the nutty NYT article in full)
http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/pophealth/2005-April/001080.html

snip>
This piece from today's New York Times is written by an American, and
doesn't consider that Norway is so much healthier than the US (almost 2
life expectancy years, where 3.5 in the US would be gained by eradicating
heart disease as a cause of death).

Their maternal mortality ratio is a third of ours.
Our C-section rate is twice theirs.
Our teen pregnancy rate is almost five times theirs, our child poverty rate seven times theirs, our child injury death rate twice theirs, our child abuse death rate 8 times theirs.
Norway scores higher on life satisfaction and happiness as well as highest in the world on trust.
We score four times higher on unemployment rates between the least and most educated.
Norway has 3 times the percent of females in government than we do.
Their voter turnout is 50% greater, they have a 25% bigger middle class than we do.
Their unionization rate is 4 times ours.
We have 80 times the number of billionaires.
I'm sure if the writer had spun it differently, it would not have been news that is fit to print.

usually pick up on something like that. The author of the Rake article admits that food is expensive, but I'm sure that was balanced out by not having to pay for the baby's delivery and his wife being allowed to stay in the hospital to rest up after the birth.

One of the stupidest loads of BS ever to appear in the NYT. :puke:

It was very funny to get an 'outsider's' view on Norway's welfare system. And yes, being pregnant in Norway is much easier than almost anywhere else in the world. I am incredibly glad I won't have to worry about ending up bankrupt simply because I needed an emergency cesaerian, or not being able to stay home more than 12 weeks after birth.

Whenever I've stayed in the US for extended periods of time, I haven't had to buy health insurance because as a Norwegian citizen I am automatically covered through 'folketrygden', or the people's benefits. Thank God.

Nice finish for a country with a GDP that's 1/5 of the United States'.

From the article:

In the United States, 71 percent of women use modern birth control, one in 2,500 mothers dies in childbirth and seven out of 1,000 infants die before they are one.

In Mali, where 6 percent of women use birth control, one in 10 mothers dies in childbirth, and one in eight infants dies before reaching age 1.

Highlights of the ground-breaking report include:

Looking back 10 years at gains in girls' education in 71 developing countries (Girls' Education Progress Report), the report finds that countries have a mixed record when it comes to progress in girls' education. Bolivia, Kenya, Cameroon and Bangladesh have made the most gains in girls' education, while Rwanda, Iraq, Malawi and Eritrea have missed the mark, primarily because of conflict, AIDS and rapid population growth.

Looking 10 years forward (Forecasts for Children), the report identifies 11 developing countries that are “most likely to succeed” in improving children’s quality of life in the next decade in three important areas of global development: achieving smaller, healthier families; educating all children; and reaching the Millennium Development Goal targets.

The sixth annual Mothers' Index ranks the best and worst countries to be a mother, based on a review of 10 indicators of women’s and children’s well-being among 110 countries, including the United States. Scandinavian countries sweep the top rankings, while countries in sub-Saharan Africa dominate the bottom tier. The United States ranks in 11th place. The Mothers' Index demonstrates the benefits of investing in mothers to help ensure the survival and well-being of children. In those countries where mothers do well, children do well; in those countries where mothers fare poorly, children fare poorly.

<http://www.savethechildren.org/mothers/report_2005/index.asp>


The complete report shows rankings for Mother's Index, Women's Index and Children's Index. US ranks 11, 15 and 10 respectively.

Complete Report
<http://www.savethechildren.org/mothers/report_2005/images/SOWM_2005.pdf>

taking us there...fast!

Where is my country?

She told me that she would get up to 3 years off of work after having a baby with pay. She thought our system was terrible to families. Also she could not understand why the people of our country was talking so much about Clinton and Monica. She said that their president liked to drink vodka but did not have it on the news all the time. It is very interesting to talk to people from other countries and hear what they think about our country.

I used to go to a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Berkeley for lunch a lot. I made friends with a waiter there who came from rural Southern China. He said he came here for the opportunity to make a better life for himself and his family.

One day we were talking about freedom of speech. He said something that initially surprised me. He said he felt he had more freedom in China than he did in the US. He described a life which was remarkably rich with political discussion and social involvement on the micro level.

While there was tremendous repression at the macro level, people got around it by being very politically/philosophically engaged on the local level, under the official radar so to speak.

The end of the story? He moved his family back to China because he found the US so oppressive and so lacking in opportunity for economic and social mobility.

A limited personal anecdote but interesting none the less.

has none according to others around the world. When are the people of this country going to figure out its all just lip service?

Both his parents are Russian born and raised, but now live and work here in the US. My wife was talking to the Russian mother while the two boys were playing basketball and was somewhat startled when the mother said to her that they (the family) was considering moving to Australia since the social programs in the US were so poor. I thought it revealing that citizens of the former Soviet Union didn't think the social safety net in the US was worth much. Why, how often were we told during the Cold War how much the people living under Communist regimes wanted out? It appears that former Communists are more nostalgic for social programs then they are for "freedom."

what we have here!!! That tells ya our medical system is falling behind!!!

The tragedy that is Africa is due in no small part to centuries of European and now US colonial involvement in the continent's political and social "development".

If you want a textbook lesson in the horrifying rot that is colonialism, look no further than this maligned continent, a cauldron of the toxic mixture of racism, sexism, and military adventurism.

It is a shame that this birthplace of humanity has been so maligned by its own corrupt and violent progeny.

These findings line up with a lot of other research about social health - Scandinavian and continental European countries near the top, then the English speaking western countries cluster together below that (in this case Canada 8th, Australia 9th, U.K 10th, U.S. 11th). Canada is usually at some middle position between the Nordic countries and the Anglo-Saxon countries (bearing in mind that these categorizations are extreme generalizations). A recent study on university accessibility that I read by the Educational Policy Institute had broadly similar findings, for example.

2005 Mothers’ Index
Rank Country
1 Sweden
2 Denmark
3 Finland
4 Austria
5 Germany
6 Netherlands
7 Norway
8 Canada
9 Australia
10 United Kingdom
Top 10*

pg 36
http://www.savethechildren.org/mothers/report_2005/images/SOWM_2005.pdf

*US is 11th