To save a young child, help a mother, report says

By Anne K Walters May 8, 2007, 12:25 GMT

Washington - Nearly 10 million children under the age of five die each year - that's 28,000 a day - but a report released Tuesday said reaching out to mothers and improving healthcare could prevent about half of those deaths.

The report, State of the World's Mothers 2007, by humanitarian aid group Save the Children lists rich nations like Sweden, Iceland and Norway as the best places to be a mother, but focuses on poorer countries and efforts to eliminate deaths among young children.

Political will is more important than wealth in reducing deaths among children under five years old, and Malawi, Bangladesh, Nepal, Tanzania and Madagascar have made progress in child survival in part by increasing mothers' access to healthcare.

Still, fully one-third of the 60 developing countries where most of the deaths occur have lost ground or made no progress, the study said. Rates of infant mortality have increased in Iraq, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.

'In many of these countries, given rates of under-5 mortality and fertility, a mother today is more likely to lose a child than her own mother was 25 years ago,' the report said.

Egypt has had the most success in reducing child mortality, bringing it down 68 per cent in the past 15 years. It was able to reduce the number of mothers who die and decrease the fertility rate partly through an international 'healthy mother, healthy child' initiative that focused on care for pregnant women, childbirth assistance and family planning in areas with the worst health conditions.

An Indonesian programme that placed midwives in many villages, an increase in prenatal care and more immunizations for babies decreased infant mortality there by 60 per cent.

Even poorer nations were able to save children's lives. In Malawi, where gross national income is just 650 dollars per person, the number of children dying was down 43 per cent in 2005 from 1990.

The countries with the largest increase in children's deaths were wracked by conflict, poverty and AIDS.

Iraq saw the worst increase in deaths among young children, with mortality increasing 150 per cent since 1990, and more than half of those deaths were among newborns.

Since the US-led invasion of 2003, mothers and children have been hit hard by electricity shortages, lack of clean water and deteriorating health services, but the increase in deaths began earlier because of 'years of repression, conflict and external sanctions,' the report said.

Save the Children recommends improving nutrition for mothers, providing skilled help during childbirth and increasing access to contraceptives as keys to improving mothers' health, a first step in helping children survive.

'Investing in the health of mothers everywhere is not just the right thing to do - it is the smart thing to do,' the group's president Charles MacCormack said in a statement. 'When we take care of mothers by ensuring that they have the basic tools they need to improve the quality of life for themselves and their children, we also improve prospects for generations to come.'

The group also pushes low-cost measures including immunizations, breastfeeding and the use of mosquito nets to prevent malaria. Governments, especially the United States, need to provide money to improve health care services for poor women and children around the world, the report stresses.

The full report can be found at www.savethechildren.org.